by John Locke
CHAPTER 29
“All of us had to share details about our customers with a man named Grasso,” Paige said.
“By ‘all of us’ you mean?”
“The local girls, the ones they consider hot.”
“Jenine would obviously qualify.”
“Yes. She’s one of the faves.”
“What can you tell me about Grasso?”
“Not too much. He works for a major gangster. I don’t want to say who.”
I peeled off another grand and placed it in her hand. She looked into my eyes. “You didn’t get this from me.”
“Of course.”
She whispered, “Joseph DeMeo.” Then she said, “Please, mister, keep me out of this. I’ve got kids.”
“I will,” I said, “but you’ve got to find another line of work. You’re not safe doing this. We won’t repeat anything you told us, but DeMeo knows you’re friends with Jenine and Star, and they’re gone now. You’ve got to get your kids and get the hell out of town. DeMeo won’t leave any loose ends. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
I kissed her cheek and let her go.
An hour later, we pulled up to the guard station at Edwards. I flashed my credentials, and one of the guards informed me that all flights had been grounded due to the terrorist attack. I got Darwin on the phone, and within minutes the guard received orders from the base commander to open the gate. Our limo driver took us across the tarmac and parked us next to the company’s jet. Quinn reminded me to pop the trunk so he could retrieve his saxophone.
“That reminds me,” I said, and sang, “You cain’t always get h’what you wa-hant!”
Quinn’s facial deformity prevented him from smiling, but you could sometimes find amusement there if you knew how to interpret it. I was one of the few who did.
“Always figured you for a Stones fan,” he said.
The pilots, who had been glued to the TV in the auxiliary terminal, were now racing across the tarmac to open the cabin door for us.
“It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get her ready for takeoff ,” one of them shouted.
Quinn and I climbed into the cabin. While he got situated, I poured us a drink. He said, “Is your cell phone broken? Reason I ask, you’ve checked it half a dozen times since the explosion.”
“I sort of thought Janet might call,” I said.
“Heard about the attack, wondered if you’re okay?” he said.
“Stupid, right?”
Quinn shrugged and held up his glass. “To ex-wives,” he said.
We clinked glasses. “I’m not sure that counts,” I said. “You’ve never been married.”
Quinn drank some of his bourbon. “Never been bitten by a yak, either.”
I held a sip of the bourbon in my mouth a few seconds to enhance the burn. “Yak?” I said.
He grinned.
I swallowed the bourbon and took another sip. “Me, either,” I said. “That strike you as odd?”
Quinn’s eyes started smiling again, or so it seemed to me. He said, “One time Coop told me he got bit by a yak. Said he was in India in a town whose name can’t be pronounced by anyone who’s not from Tibet. Said they made him drink tea made from yak butter.”
“Yak butter,” I said.
“Coop says the average man in Tibet drinks forty to fifty cups of tea every day of his life. The teapot always has a big lump of yak butter in it. You’re supposed to blow the yak butter scum out of the way before you take a sip,” Quinn said.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Same thing I told Coop!”
I nodded. “To Coop,” I said, and we touched glasses again. From the cockpit, I heard the pilots working through their preflight checklist. Quinn silently swallowed the rest of his bourbon. I followed his lead. The co-pilot opened the door and gave us a thumbs-up, and we buckled our seat belts and settled in for the long flight to Virginia. I looked out the window and for the first time it struck me that today had been clear and beautiful, just like New York City on 9/11.
CHAPTER 30
The jet made quick work of the runway. Once airborne, I told the pilot to veer toward the hotel so I could witness the scene from above. However, within seconds, an F/A-18 Hornet pulled alongside us and escorted us northeast, out of LA airspace.
The co-pilot opened the cabin door. “Sorry about that, Mr. Creed.”
“You pussy,” I said.
He frowned and went back to work, leaving me to contemplate the smoldering bodies I’d seen just hours ago. I pictured families and loved ones across the country desperately dialing cell phones that would never be answered. I wondered if, when the roof fell, how many rescue personnel had to be added to the death toll.
After we hit cruising altitude, I called Victor. When he answered, I said, “How’d you do it?”
“If … you’re … talk … ing … about the … spy … satel … lite … you can … tell … your … people … I’m … sorry. I … won’t … do it … again.”
“You’re sorry?” I said. “You’re kidding, right? ’Cause they have ways to make you sorry. By the way, where’s Monica?”
I heard a shuffling sound, and a guy with a high-pitched but otherwise normal voice took over. “Mr. Creed,” he said, “My name is Hugo.”
“Hugo,” I said.
“That is correct,” he said.
“Your voice,” I said. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you’re a little person.”
“Also correct,” he said.
“Okay, so I’m supposed to believe your names are Victor and Hugo. Who do you guys hang out with, HG and Wells?”
“I do not know any HG and Wells,” he said. “I am Victor’s spiritual adviser.”
“Spiritual adviser,” I said.
“That is correct.”
In the background, I heard Victor say, “Tell … him … the … rest.” Hugo attempted to cover the mouthpiece with his hand but it was a small hand and I could still hear them talking, plain as day.
Hugo said, “He’ll laugh at me.”
Victor said, in a commanding voice, “Tell … him!”
Hugo removed his hand from the mouthpiece and told me he was something, but his voice was so small I had to ask him to repeat himself.
“You’re the what?” I asked.
“Supreme commander of his army.”
“I’m trying to think of something funny to say,” I said, “but you’ve rendered me speechless.”
Hugo said he and Victor had amassed an army of little people all over the country. “We have soldiers everywhere,” Hugo said. “Hundreds. Some are captains of industry. Others have access to information surpassing all but the highest pay grades. We’ve even got a little person on the White House kitchen staff,” he boasted.
“What is he,” I asked, “a short order cook?”
He covered up the mouthpiece again and I heard him tell Victor, “Say the word and I’ll kill the bastard. Turn me loose on him, that’s all I ask. I’ll cut out his liver and dance on it.” He was shouting now: “I want to dance on his liver!” Victor took charge of the phone.
“Mr. … Creed … you … have up … set my … gen … eral.”
“C’mon, Victor, cut the crap,” I said. “I need to know if Monica’s alive. If so, I need to kill her. Thanks to you, it’s become a matter of national security.”
“We … should … meet,” he said. “There … is much … ground … to … cover.”
We agreed to meet Tuesday morning at Café Napoli in New York City. “You got an address for me?” I asked.
“Hes … ter and Mul … berry,” he said. “In … Little … Italy.”
“Little Italy,” I said.
“You … see I’m … not … without … a sense … of hu … mor, Mr. Creed.”
“You gonna have soldiers at the restaurant?”
“Eight o’ … clock be … fore the … place … opens up,” he said.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
After completing my conversation with Victor and Hugo, I placed a call to headquarters and told Lou Kelly that the hotel bomb wasn’t a terrorist strike. “It was a personal attack against me by Joe DeMeo,” I said.
I gave him all the embarrassing details regarding my tryst with Jenine, told him about Coop the driver getting killed and about Jenine and Star and how their house had been sterilized.
“This Jenine, she the one you’d pegged for Callie’s body double?”
“She was, and she’d have been perfect.” I didn’t tell him about the birthmark photos I’d taken. It seemed like an intrusion, somehow.
“What you’re saying,” Lou said, “Jenine and her friends, and most of the prostitutes in LA …”
“The pretty ones,” I said.
“All the pretty prostitutes in LA: working for Joe DeMeo?”
“Not working for him as in being pimped, but yeah, he finances their Web sites, has his people monitor the sites and the girls, and pays them for information.”
“Information he can use to buy influence with politicians, maybe the Hollywood elite?”
“Otherwise, how would he know where and when I was planning to meet Jenine?”
“He’d set this up even before your meeting at the cemetery,” Lou said.
“Otherwise his guys would have shot me there.”
“Not the easiest thing to do with Quinn guarding you.”
“Yeah, but DeMeo had nine guys there the night before. DeMeo told me they spotted Augustus. Still, Quinn would have killed a couple, and I might have done the same, but we were out-manned and on Joe’s turf. He could have killed us both. And should have,” I said.
“Why have a big shootout in the middle of the day? Better to use Jenine to bomb you,” Lou said. “He already knew you planned to visit a hooker in Santa Monica.”
“Make it look like a terrorist attack,” I said. “Kill Jenine, let her take the fall. They’ve got her computer, which ties her to me, and they can make it look like she was working with terrorists.”
“And Joe DeMeo gets away with pinning the hotel bombing on the terrorists.”
“Joe’s a slick one,” I said.
We were silent a moment while Lou’s mind worked it. “You tell Darwin about DeMeo yet?”
“I wanted to bounce it off you first.”
“Uh huh. Well, we better let him be the one to tell the world,” Lou said.
“Or not tell them.”
“You think he’ll try to cover it up?”
“I think he’ll keep the blame focused on the terrorists. He left the possibility open with Monica, and this is a logical extension. It’s easy to believe, and it’s good politically; it justifies his job and budget and brings the country together.”
“He’ll have to tell the Feebs something,” Lou said.
“Whatever he tells them, our focus is Monica. After we confirm her death, we’ll give them the hotel bombing and let them take the credit for solving it.”
“That’s worst case scenario,” Lou said. “We might get lucky, find and rescue Monica. Then we give the Feebs all the glory and get a ton of future favors in return.”
I said nothing.
There was a short pause and then he said, “Oh, right. I got it. There will be no rescue.”
I said, “Just so we’re on the same page.”
Lou sighed. “This business,” he said.
“Don’t get me started.”
I told Lou to get some full-timers working on any connection they could find between Baxter Childers and Victor.
“Tell me about Victor,” he said, and I told him what I knew, except for the part about the spy satellite.
Then I asked, “How long you think it’ll take to find a connection?”
Lou laughed. “Five, maybe ten minutes.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“Donovan, you and I each have our specialties, and for both of us, some jobs are harder than others. When you tell me that on the one hand you’ve got a world-famous surgeon, on the other an angry quadriplegic midget with dreadlocks, and you know there’s a connection and want me to find it—well that’s like asking you how long it would take to kill a hamster with a shotgun.”
“So that’s a yes.”
“It is.”
I told Lou to also contact the LAPD and bomb squad techs and get back to me ASAP. The more we learned about the bomb, the more we’d know about Joe DeMeo and the extent of his power.
“No way the attack on you could have been an inside job?” Lou asked.
“I don’t think so. If our guys, including you, wanted to kill me, it would be a lot easier to just poison me.” I glanced at Quinn and noticed him watching me with amused indifference. “Of course, Quinn knew about both Jenine and the hotel,” I said, “but it’s hard to pin it on him.”
Quinn pricked up his ears.
“Not because he’s my friend,” I said, aiming a smile in his direction, “but because he didn’t know my plans for after the DeMeo meeting. I didn’t tell him about the hotel or Jenine until a few minutes before we got there. And he didn’t know her name or what she looked like until she arrived. None of that really matters, because Augustus could kill me anytime he wants when we’re testing the ADS weapon.”
Quinn nodded and closed his eyes, glad to know he wasn’t a suspect. Now maybe I wouldn’t try to murder him in his sleep.
“One more thing,” Lou said. “They’ve got your cell phone number.”
I hadn’t thought about that, but sure, if Jenine had my number, DeMeo’s team had it.
“If he’s got whores and bombs, he’s probably got connections to a radical fringe element as well,” Lou said.
“So?”
“You might want to shut down your cell phone, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case DeMeo’s aiming a Stinger missile at your cell signal right now.”
“Shit!” I said. I hung up and ripped the battery out of my cell phone. The jet had a secure phone, and Quinn had one, too, so I didn’t need mine anyway. I took a deep breath, thinking, Jesus, there’s so much to think about in this business! I let the breath out slowly, kicked off my shoes, and turned my attention to Quinn, hoping for conversation. However, my deadly giant was snoring away. I had to admire anyone who could fall asleep so quickly, especially at a time like this.
I couldn’t sleep; I felt trapped inside the jet’s luxurious cabin. Felt impotent, too. Stuck in this metal cocoon, I couldn’t do anything about Janet or Monica or Kathleen or the hotel bombing. I couldn’t even read the book I’d started on the flight here—it had vaporized in the hotel along with the rest of my personal items. I tapped my fingers on the burl wood table and glanced around the cabin for a newspaper. Started flipping through a People Magazine, hoping Augustus wouldn’t catch me doing so, but I couldn’t get into it. When you’ve survived a bomb blast and more than a hundred people didn’t, it’s hard to focus on rumors of a possible hickey on Paris Hilton’s neck.
I was going stir-crazy. I checked my watch for the third time since Lou’s call and tried to fall asleep, but the monotonous thrum of the turbofans kept mocking me. I tapped my fingers some more and tried to think about what sort of relationship might exist between Joe DeMeo and Victor, if any. Then wondered how to go about stealing twenty-five mil from Joe DeMeo. Then I worked on the problem of how to find and kill Monica Childers, assuming she wasn’t already dead.
I’d never had trouble concentrating on business before, but here, locked in this environment, nothing was working. Listen to me: environment! Hell, who was I kidding? It wasn’t the environment. I knew exactly what it was: whether I was having sex with Lauren or saying good-bye to Jenine or sitting alone bored out of my gourd on a luxury jet, all my thoughts eventually turned to Kathleen. There was something about her infectious laugh and winning personality that touched my heart and made me itch to know what might have been. That was over now and probably couldn
’t be salvaged. In dumping me, she’d made the right decision, because in the final analysis, I was no better than Ken Chapman. We’d both managed to hurt her in our own way.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
CHAPTER 32
“Daddy, thank God you’re okay! I mean, I knew you would be, but whenever something like this happens, I can’t help but worry.”
