The prostitutes ball ss-10

by Stephen Cannell

  From what I could see, Diego San Diego appeared to be a very tanned, fit man in his mideighties. He had a full head of steel gray hair. His teeth looked big and strong, reminding me again of the Amazon River crocs and those foolish birds that wandered into the jaws of death to feed.

  The story under the photo stated that Arabian horse breeder Diego San Diego had been a large benefactor of the City of Hope Oncology Center since the death of his wife, Maria Elaina Blanca San Diego, from breast cancer ten years earlier.

  Diego was continuing to gain energy as the primary focus of my investigation. But I was so tired I couldn't plot a decent course of action. My head felt like a ball of cotton.

  I shut off the computer, grabbed a bottle of Corona beer from the fridge, and went out to the backyard. Alexa was just finishing her e-mails so I sat in one of the metal chairs to enjoy the view while I waited for her.

  My thoughts quickly turned away from the beautiful moonlit water and fresh ocean breeze to more venal, monetary concerns. For instance, where was my twinkling jeweled carpet of city lights? How come I had no large bubbling Jacuzzi at my elbow and no plate-glass windows that looked down on the clouds?

  Hitch parked his expensive sports car under a porte cochere while my leased Acura was pulled up next to my neighbor's trash cans.

  I was trying not to let any of those pesky flies land on me when my wife came out holding a cold beer and sat down. She also looked extremely tired. It had been a long day for us both.

  "My detective commanders all got their estimated budgets in late," she said. "It gets worse every year."

  "Well, they have divisions to run," I replied, wondering as I said it if Jamie Foxx would really agree to star in Prostitutes Ball, doubling our potential domestic gross.

  She sighed. "It's getting way tougher to make a decent financial plan with all these city budget cuts."

  "Right," I agreed as I sipped from my bottle. Corona is good beer, I thought, but just for the hell of it, maybe I should pick up a few six-packs of that imported German lager that Hitch drinks.

  "How's the armored car case coming?" Alexa asked.

  "We have a person of interest. Two, if you count Stender Sheedy Sr."

  She looked at me and raised an eyebrow, so I brought her up to date. I also filled her in on the few things I'd just learned about Diego San Diego.

  "Sheedy is the nexus," she said, cutting to the bottom line, like she always did. "He touches both cases. He was making noise in the eighties and he's still barking."

  "Yeah."

  Alexa sat for a moment thinking about the case. Then she turned and looked directly at me.

  "You know, for two smart guys, there's one thing here you and Hitch aren't dealing with, but you should because it makes absolutely no sense."

  "The abandoned gold."

  "Exactly. You've got this guy, Diego San Diego, who you think may be a big-time Colombian money launderer, making him a time-sensitive cash broker, yet he leaves fifteen million in gold bullion parked in that well house for over twenty-five years?"

  "I know, but Jose said…"

  "I don't care what Jose said. Jose seems a little flaky to me anyway. Something this out of whack has to be wrong."

  "You think it's counterfeit?"

  "It's gotta be counterfeit," she said, and set her beer down. "Look, it's not my case, it's yours. But I was one of the primary responders on the triple that got this whole thing started. My opinion is, get a second assay opinion."

  I took another sip of Corona and thought about it. She was right.

  "Hang on a minute," Alexa said. Then she got up, went into her office, and returned a moment later with a slip of paper. There was a name and number written on it.

  "Who's Materon Smith?" I asked.

  "She's the contact person I talked to at the Jewelry Mart. She gave us Jose Del Cristo. I took him because he was immediately available. That doesn't mean he's necessarily the best. There are others who do gold assays down there. She said I could call her anytime, day or night."

  I was still holding the slip of paper when Alexa pulled her cell out of its holster and handed it to me. I dialed and got Mrs. Smith. She sounded like she'd been asleep, but after I told her who I was, she said it was okay, she was used to taking midnight calls from their brokerage contacts in Europe.

  "I think we need another assay done for the purpose of legal verification," I told her somewhat vaguely.

  "I have three more firms I can call for you."

  She read off the names. One was the Latimer Commodities Exchange in downtown L. A. She told me they just went into that business a few years ago. I put Materon Smith on hold and looked over at Alexa.

  "Latimer just started doing assays."

  "Go for it," Alexa said. "Might tell us something."

  "Can you set me up an appointment with Latimer first thing in the morning?" I said into the phone.

  "They open at seven. How's seven fifteen? I can meet you there."

  "Perfect." I hung up, then handed the cell back to Alexa. "Seven fifteen tomorrow morning," I told her.

  "Good. You should probably call Jeb and have an armed patrol officer get one of the gold bricks out of the evidence room and meet you there."

  I made the call, waking Jeb up too. But he wasn't ticked off either because this case was now weighing down on all of us.

  After I hung up, Alexa looked at me and said, "I'd like to come up with something else, but my mind is putty."

  "Mine too."

  "Race you to the bedroom."

  I didn't know what she had in mind, but I got up and headed that way. I was going about as fast as a man who'd only had five hours of sleep in seventy-two could go.

  Naturally, she beat me.

  We made love in our big queen-sized bed. It calmed my nerves and raised my spirits, lightening my mood. When we finished we lay in each other's arms. She didn't speak and a few minutes later I realized the reason. She was already asleep.

  I looked up at the ceiling, then pushed my thoughts about the case into a cupboard in the back of my head and slammed the door shut to wait for morning.

  As I often did before sleep, I lapsed into a confusing personal inventory of my assets and liabilities. It was something I'd been doing since I was in the Huntington House group home as a child. Back then, I would sit on the toilet in the big, shared bathroom in Sharon Cross Hall with the door locked and my meager collection of stolen treasures on my lap.

  I would look at my money, most of it lifted from the purses of social workers at the group home. I would count it, then stuff it in my pocket. Each time I examined the broken gold watch that I'd filched off some guy's towel at the beach I'd wonder if I got it fixed what it might be worth. A few rings and trinkets completed the stash. It was a collection of questionable worth, because I had paid for most of it with my own loss of self-esteem.

  Lately these bedtime inventories tended to be more psychological than material, but now, all these years later, I again found myself fantasizing about wealth. It felt like lost ground. Was I still building my castles too close to the water?

  As I lay in my bed listening to Alexa's rhythmic breathing I suddenly realized that I was having a midlife crisis. I was nearing the end of my police career and had very little set aside. As a child, my life had only been about me. I was the most important part of every equation. As I got older, I felt smaller and smaller inside my surroundings. This whole movie deal seemed to have kicked these hidden insecurities into overdrive. Now I tried to put things into a better perspective.

  Sure, it would be nice to be wealthy, to drive a Carrera and have a huge house with a city view. But I knew if I wanted to have true happiness, I needed to rein all that bullshit in. It just wasn't me. At least not anymore. I had built this castle in exactly the right place.

  It wasn't on Mount Olympus. It was in Venice Beach, California. That was my reality. And you know what? That reality was pretty damn good.

  There were no angels singing, but I g
ot to hold one in my arms.

  As I fell asleep I was thinking not many guys got to do that.

  Chapter 48

  Alexa was out of the house early. I left a few minutes behind her so I could make it to Latimer Commodities Exchange by seven fifteen. I also wanted to start the spade and shovel work on Diego San Diego's background.

  I was on the freeway by six forty-five, heading into town, when I finally got through to Barry Matthews, my contact on the white-collar squad who handled business and financial crime. He swung on better vines inside of L. A.'s complex financial jungle. I thought if anyone could pierce Diego's aversion to the press and get me some dirt, Barry was the one.

  Once he was on the line I said, "I need a deep background check, state and federal, on Diego San Diego." I told him what little information I'd found horse breeder, polo player, commodities broker, film financier. "Also, anything you can give me on his financial and banking affairs."

  "Point me in a direction. What, exactly, are you looking for?"

  "I think there's a decent chance he used to be a Colombian money launderer in the eighties. That hunch is supported by the fact he dealt in easy-to-move, high-value international commerce, like gemstones and gold bullion.

  "He might have a connection to a Swiss jewelry company called Farvagny-le-Grand in Geneva. I'd also like you to see if he connects to Thomas Vulcuna, who owned a production company named Eagle's Nest and was supposed to have killed his wife and daughter then shot himself. We cleared it in eighty-one."

  "Supposed to have?" Barry said, alert to every nuance.

  "I think we got it wrong. San Diego might have had silent dealings with Eagle's Nest. Go back before 1981 and be sure to check with DEA."

  "Anybody else?" I could hear him turn a page. For a computer geek, he had some old-school habits.

  "Yeah. He has a connection to Stender Sheedy Sr., the managing partner of Sheedy, Devine, and Lipscomb, a white-shoe law firm in Century City. I'd like to know what those two have been doing. Also, there might be a Thayer Dunbar connection as well."

  "The oil billionaire?"

  "Yeah, and listen, Barry. This is kinda hush-hush. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't farm any of it out."

  "What's your timetable?" "ASAP."

  "ASAP," he repeated. "What ever happened to WYCGI?"

  "Never heard of it. What the hell is WYCGI?"

  "Whenever you can get it."

  "We'll do that one next time." Then I thanked him and hung up.

  The Latimer Commodities Exchange was located on the top floor in an old brick building off Sixth Street in the Jewelry District. Jeb Calloway had signed out another gold brick from the evidence locker and brought the twenty-seven-pound London Good Delivery Bar over himself, along with a police escort to help guard it.

  They arrived in a black-and-white and pulled in next to where I was waiting. The uniform carried a heavy canvas satchel with the bar inside, following Jeb and me into the elevator. We rode to the twelfth floor.

  Materon Smith met us in the lobby and escorted us down the hall. She was a heavyset African-American woman in her midforties with a friendly face. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  "I got Valentine Rosinski to come in early," she said. "Hes one of the best assayers in L. A."

  The lab was large, and filled with an impressive array of equipment. We were greeted at the door by Rosinski, a man with a laurel wreath of gray hair fringing his head. He was wearing a white lab coat and sixty extra pounds.

  Jeb put the gold bar on the table and Rosinski studied it carefully. "Is right size for London Good Delivery Bar," he said in a semi-thick Russian accent.

  He lifted it, nodded, then set it down on its face and, like Jose Del Cristo, read the Oswald Steel identification trademark on the back. Then, exactly as Jose had, he told us the bar was made pre-1985 and put a nail mark in the gold to test its softness. He weighed it, getting the same four-hundred-troy-ounce reading.

  "What tests have been done?"

  I looked at my case notes. "An acid test for purity which said the gold was twenty-four karats, and ninety-nine point seven percent pure. Then it was taken to an assay office downtown for an X-ray fluorescence scan, which it also passed."

  Rosinski continued to study the bar. "London Good Delivery Bars would be hard to make counterfeit, yah? Very expensive to do this. Top-quality fake today would cost maybe fifty thousand U. S. dollars to produce, because today, you would need to use much real gold to pass our new tests. In 1983, not so much. Back then, they have no neutron activation analysis, no speed-of-sound tests. Weight is always a problem unless you use tungsten."

  I said, "I understand that tungsten is very hard to work with because it melts at extremely high temperatures."

  He smiled. "When you are stealing gold, a little hard work is not such a bad thing, no?"

  "I guess not."

  "Since you already do X-ray fluorescence scan, I suggest a neutron activation analysis. It s more thorough, is nondestructive, and will tell what we need to know."

  "And the X-ray won't?" Jeb asked.

  "If your bar has a one-sixteenth-inch layer of gold on top of a tungsten base, the X-ray will not pass through. This makes it read pure. This neutron analysis is better."

  "How long 'til we know?" I asked.

  "I can't start until tomorrow because I have other work," Val Rosinski said. "But tomorrow, maybe an hour or two after we open, we know."

  We left the gold bar in the same spot where it began its journey-over twenty-five years ago, right here, at the Latimer Commodities Exchange.

  It was only a little past eight when I got back into my car. As soon as I did, my Bluetooth beeped. I answered and instantly had Hitch's voice in my ear. He sounded excited.

  "Listen, dawg. I just got a strong bite."

  "On San Diego?"

  "On Jamie Foxx. He wants a meet this morning. A guy from his production company just called me. I'm not sure exactly what Jamie wants to discuss, 'cause his assistant didn't have any details, just that Jamie wants to see me. The agency isn't open yet so I can't call Jerry and get a heads-up. One of my UTA guys musta given him a sniff of this yesterday."

  I didn't say anything. I was getting mad.

  "Shane?"

  "Listen, Hitch, this is supposed to be on the DL, remember? Now you're telling me UTA is out there blabbing it around? Did you leak this to them?"

  "No. I haven't told them a word about the gold. But agents are scavengers, man. They root in other people's trash. That's how they go for the gold. Excuse the double metaphor… You can't stop them 'cause it's in their DNA. Of course I told UTA about the old Vulcuna murder-suicide, but you already knew I did that. If they called Jamie, that's probably all they told him about." I didn't answer that either. "Shane, are you there?"

  "Yeah."

  "This could be huge, man. We gotta drop everything and go see Jamie right now."

  "What about that other thing?"

  "What other thing?"

  "Our case, dipshit. The twenty-five-year-old gold heist with five corpses. You do remember that, don't you?"

  "Of course."

  "It's picking up speed. We don't have time this morning to be messing with your movie-star friend."

  "Listen, dawg "

  "I'm a lot of things, but not a dawg," I interrupted. "I'm sometimes a jerk, even an asshole, but I'm not a fucking dawg."

  "If that's your call, fine. But here's the 411. Jamie is headed off to London on a European promotional tour for his new flick that's just coming out. Then he's in Prague for six months on the new Michael Mann film. He's leaving at noon from Van Nuys Airport on his G-5."

  "So what?"

  "Right now, this morning, he happens to be in Malibu looking at some property he wants to buy. He happens to want to talk to us about Prostitutes Ball. If we get our asses up there, he'll hear me out, but it's kinda time sensitive. We blow this meet, unless we wanta spend a fortune to go to Prague, we lose our chance at getting any
face-time with him for half a year."

  I remained silent. Or maybe I just groaned slightly.

  "Okay, okay. So I'll say no. I just had to check with you, dawg I mean, Shane. Because, like it or not, I've become sort of fond of you. I'm trying to keep my partner from throwing away a bloody fortune so you and Alexa won't get stuck eating dog food after you've pulled the pin and shot through your measly police pension."

  I suddenly realized I was so distracted by this conversation I was driving erratically and straddling two lanes. Cars behind me on Sixth Street started honking. I corrected and felt myself caving in to this new lust for money.

  The canal house was nice, but beachfront would be better. Instead of taking our retirement sitting on lawn chairs in some public campground, wouldn't Alexa and I be happier on a sleek sixty-foot sailboat with silk spinnakers, cruising the California coast?

  "I'll call him and tell him no." He paused. "So that's the decision. That's what you want, right?"

  "Uhhh, well…" I was vapor locking.

  "Good. I hear indecision in your voice. You're finally coming to your senses. Listen, I got directions here. It's off Trancas Canyon, but it's a little confusing. Meet me at Moonshadows restaurant on the Coast Highway out by Malibu in half an hour. Can you make that?" "I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure we should be doing this." "Its a lousy two hours out of your life, get a grip, Scully." "Okay, okay. I'll see you there."

  Chapter 49

  I turned around, headed the other way, and got on the Santa Monica Freeway to the Coast Highway. All the way, I kept wondering who I was turning into. Was I now just a Donald Trump wannabe with a badge?

  Hitch was waiting in the restaurant parking lot with the top down, looking like a GQ photo spread in his tan suit, pink shirt, and matching tie. I pulled in and he shouted.

  "Park over there. We'll take my ride."

  I parked and got in the Porsche. We buzzed out onto PCH heading farther up the coast toward Trancas Canyon. As we drove, I told him I'd set up a second gold assay test at the Latimer Commodities Exchange. He didn't seem too interested. He was deep in movie producer mode.