by David Putnam
“I’m sorry about Bosco.”
“Thanks. The doctor gives him a fifty-fifty chance of comin’ out of it. That’s better than last night when they told us to get his affairs in order. What a fucked-up way to tell someone their son is going to die.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know what else to say. “Yeah”? What kind of reply was that? The guilt came on again and started to smother me. I again thought about John Cruz and how he just got up and walked away. That helped a little, helped me to imagine that Bosco could still pull through, wake up, and just climb out of that hospital bed. Yeah, and pigs could fly.
“Hey,” Bobby Ray said, “how do you think we should handle this other problem with the ATF? I still wanna go forward with it. Bosco’s going to come out of it, I know he is, and I don’t want him going to a hospital ward in a prison.”
“You got your hands full there at the hospital. Let me make a call, then I’ll get back to you.”
“Call who?”
“I’m not gonna say over the phone, but there is someone I can call who owes me a favor.”
Dan Chulack, Senior Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, no longer owed me. On our last phone call, he’d made it clear we were even and not to call him again, that if we ever met again, he’d be forced to arrest me for the outstanding federal warrants.
“Thanks, buddy,” Bobby Ray said.
“No problem. I’ll hang onto the money until I see you next.”
“I’m not worried about the money, I trust you. Get back to me as soon as you can. I really need to get this thing resolved. And thanks again.”
He clicked off.
He wouldn’t thank me once the word got out about what happened out on that freeway. He wouldn’t call me buddy anymore.
Marie came back into the room. “Give me that phone. You heard the doctor.”
The phone in my hand rang. I held up one finger, begging for just one more minute. Bobby Ray forgot to tell me something and had just called back.
I answered it. “Yeah, Bobby?”
“Bruno, this is Dan Chulack, we need to talk.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“HOW DID YOU get this number?”
But I knew. The FBI had a wiretap on Bobby Ray’s phone. He was president of the Visigoths. Of course they did.
Marie came around the bed and grabbed at the phone. I dodged her and said, “Babe, it’s the FBI.”
She froze. Fear filled her face. She looked to the hotel room door as if at any second it would come down under the force of a ram. She ran the short distance to the window and looked down at the street.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s Dan.”
“Dan Chulack? How’d he get Drago’s number?” She ran back, crawled across the bed, and put her ear to the phone next to mine. Drago backed to the wall and looked on. He didn’t like the sound of the letters FBI, and he had to be fighting the urge to do something. With him it was never flight, it was always fight. Right now he had nothing to fight, a dog without his bone.
Dan said, “You there, Bruno?”
“Yeah, good to hear from you, Dan. It’s been a long time. How can I help you?”
“Not on the phone. I’ll meet you across the street at the mall, by the train.” He clicked off.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The world swerved as it took a moderate curve around a long, slow bend. I put my hand to my head to steady my ship.
“No, you’re not going anywhere. You heard what the doctor said.”
“Sweetie, the FBI knows we’re holed up in this hotel. If I don’t go down there, they’ll have no choice but to come kick down our door with a warrant. This was a courtesy call Dan just gave me.”
“You mean, you think he’s going to arrest you?”
I stood and went to the closet for some pants, a shirt, and my spare set of shoes. “No, if he intended to take me in, he would’ve just said to come down to the lobby. He wants something from me.”
“What could he possibly want?”
“He wants a piece of Bobby Ray.”
“Who’s Bobby Ray?”
“The president of the Visigoths.”
“Ah, Bruno, what have you gone and stuck your big nose into this time?”
I dressed, with one hand on the closet for support. I brought the shoes over, sat on the bed, and put them on. The swelling in my feet still hadn’t subsided, and my own shoes squeezed my dogs.
“Hey,” I said, “you told me you didn’t think my nose was all that large.”
“Bruno?”
“Kid,” I said to her, “really, I was just mindin’ my own business.”
That’s what I’d always say when I was telling her a story from my past just before the shit got heavy.
“Riiight, minding your own business always includes you shooting someone or running them over.”
“Really, what you must think of me.”
I probably never should’ve told her those stories. They occurred so long ago they seemed like they happened to someone else. And more important, I wasn’t that person anymore, not by a long shot.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“Me, too,” Drago said. He had been standing quietly off to the side watching our interaction. The relationship between Marie and me, for some reason, intrigued him.
My head throbbed, and I didn’t have the gumption left to argue. “Okay, stay way back, though. He knows who you are, what you guys look like, and I don’t know if he’s gonna be alone. I don’t want whoever he’s with to get a good look at you.”
Marie ran to the closet, grabbed some clothes, and ran to the bathroom. I sat on the bed to wait the twenty or thirty minutes she’d just doomed us to. Dan wouldn’t be happy.
“What’s goin’ on?” Drago asked.
“I’m married, that’s what’s goin’ on.”
He nodded with a dumb look on his mug, as if he understood.
He didn’t understand.
In the hotel lobby, I told my two shadows to wait five minutes and then follow. Drago went to two men who looked like cops dressed down in civilian clothes and quietly spoke with them.
Outside, I walked with my hand in my pockets, watching the street for a tail. I still hadn’t told Marie about what happened on the freeway. Didn’t have a chance to. Least that’s what I told myself. After the incident happened, that’s all I’d wanted to do. Now the shame of it kept the secret hidden a little longer and made it more difficult by the minute to bring it out to the light of day. I guess I didn’t want her to think poorly of me.
I walked into the open quad area of the crowded upscale mall, home to high-dollar retail stores. A little train made its way around the inside perimeter with children and adults alike onboard. Among the smiling, happy faces, I spotted Supervising Special Agent in Charge Dan Chulack on a bench by the train station. He was alone, eating a large soft pretzel with mustard. The sight of the food made my stomach growl. When had I last slowed down long enough to eat? I stopped at the pretzel cart and purchased one along with an orange soda.
I sat next to him. He wore khaki pants, a salmon-colored collared shirt, and penny loafers. I’d never realized Dan’s fashion sense remained stuck in the seventies. Even so, he still fit in nicely. I didn’t detect a hidden gun, so he must have agents out and about backing his play. I couldn’t see his eyes through his designer sunglasses.
“Good seeing you, Bruno. What happened to you? You grab onto a tiger’s tail again?”
I took a bite and chewed, ignored his comment, took a drink of soda. The orange bubbles eased the nausea in my stomach, a little. The sugar gave me the rush I needed. “What’s goin’ on, Dan?”
“You kind of stumbled into our high-profile investigation, that’s what’s going on.”
“That right?”
“That’s right.”
We both chewed our pretzels and people-watched for a moment.
Drago and Marie went into a store close by that sold
only purses. An entire store that just sold purses. I hoped Drago didn’t tell her about the bag of money.
Drago stood out like a blimp among toy balloons. Security had already keyed on him as trouble. Two uniformed security guards stood by a decorative light post, watching him through the store window, ready to pounce. They just didn’t realize that if it came to pouncing, they’d need four or five more beefy dudes if they wanted to have any chance at all.
“What investigation is that, Dan?”
He got up. “Let’s walk.” He wadded up his wrapper and headed to a trash can. I followed, still eating.
We walked the perimeter along the train rail and among the shoppers going about their business. A weekday. Didn’t anyone work for a living anymore?
Dan finally spoke. “You know I can’t tell you about it.”
“Then what am I doing here?”
He stopped and gave me the mirrored-sunglasses routine. “But that’s exactly what I want you to tell me. What the hell are you doing here?”
“We can play this stupid game all day. Or I show you mine, you show me yours.”
He didn’t smile. He just looked away, thinking about it, and after a moment nodded. “Okay, some of it, but not all of it.”
I chuckled. “What, this about national security or some shit like that?”
He looked back at me, took his sunglasses off.
I said, “Ah, shit.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I KNEW DAN Chulack to be a man of his word. Especially when talking business. At the next trash can, I tossed the remains of my pretzel and kept the soda. I’d lost my appetite. What the hell had I stuck my big nose into?
He didn’t say anything and waited for me to tell it.
“They came for me,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
He stopped. “Who did?”
“The Sons. They pulled one of our children out of his regular routine and wrote with indelible ink on his back. Wrote their phone number with two lightening bolt S’s.”
“Those sons of bitches.” Dan Chulack never swore and he hated tyranny more than anyone I knew. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“What could you do? Legally, I mean. We’re all the way down in Costa Rica. I’m wanted on federal fugitive warrants.”
He said nothing. He knew about Costa Rica and the warrants.
I continued. “The Sons want to get even for what I did to their clubhouse and . . .” I didn’t need to continue. He knew all about that, too. It had been his search warrant.
He’d been promoted out of the success of that bust that we . . . that he made. And he’d continue to ride that wave the rest of his career, known throughout the Bureau as the man who took down The Sons of Satan.
The Sons couldn’t go after Dan and his FBI. They did the next best thing—they came after me and my family.
“I needed to come back here to the States,” I said, “and make sure they got what they wanted, make sure they don’t come after my family again.”
“What are you going to do?” He lowered his tone, one of genuine concern.
“I don’t have a solid plan. Drago over there”—Marie and Drago followed along thirty or forty feet behind us, trying to blend in and failing miserably. “Drago wants to start a little program he calls Crimes Against The Sons, until they yell ‘uncle.’ ”
“Yes, with him along you might have a chance of making that work.”
I nodded. I looked again, double-checked to make sure Marie wasn’t sporting a new three-thousand-dollar purse on her arm.
We walked some more.
“Then what do you have to do with Bobby Ray and his group?” he asked.
“Independent of The Sons issue, Sonja called me, said she needed to see me, said it was real important.”
“Sonja Kowalski?”
“That’s right. Why? You working her?”
“How do you know her . . . Oh, you both worked Lynwood back in the day.”
“That’s right,” I said. He’d ignored the question about working her as an informant.
He’d done his homework on Sonja. “You watchin’ her, too?”
He didn’t answer that question either but asked his own instead. “That thing with Jumbo, tell me about it.”
“You have a tap on Bobby Ray’s phone, that’s how you got on to me, right?”
“Yes.”
We stopped again. I said, “Bobby Ray’s son, Bosco, got picked up on a gun charge by ATF.”
Dan pulled out his phone and started typing, probably asking someone on his team to verify Bosco’s arrest.
If Dan’s team had been watching Bobby Ray’s operation, then how come he didn’t know Bosco had been picked up on a gun charge?
“This same agent who popped Bosco,” I said, “approached Bobby Ray and told him he could make the case disappear for fifty K.”
He stopped typing. “And that was this McCarty you were talking about with Bobby Ray just a little while ago?”
“That’s right, but I think the name McCarty is just a ruse thrown out there to mislead the investigation. Bobby Ray and Sonja wanted me to make the drop with the fifty K and talk to the agent. I also think that they wanted me to make the agent disappear, but I wasn’t going to do that. I just wanted to identify him, see what he was all about.”
He nodded, his attention on a new text message that had just come back. “There is an ATF agent name McCarty, but he’s not involved in this in any way.”
I didn’t know how he’d found that out so quickly. “Okay,” I said, “now I guess it’s time to trade the big stuff. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one.”
“You have more?” he asked.
“One more thing.”
I had the name Larry Gerber that Jumbo gave me, and I held it back to see what Dan would give me in return.
“Bruno.”
“Did I steer you wrong last time? Tell me what you have, and I promise I’ll give you what I got. And you know I won’t tell a soul.”
Dan looked around to see if anyone stood close enough to hear. I’d never seen him act like this. I sensed his fear, and it scared the living hell out of me.
“Two weeks ago, four Hellfire missiles were stolen from March Air Force Base.”
He let me think about that for a minute. “That’s not a big deal,” I said. “If I remember from the briefings, those can’t be fired without the weapons system and the software. The software’s the only thing that can fire them. It’s like a failsafe, right?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Ah, man, you’re kiddin’ me.”
“A month and a half ago, no, two months now, a fully outfitted tactical military drone was taken from a lowboy train car in Barstow on its way to March Air Force Base. We can’t figure out how they did it.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “With that drone and its software, they could fly below most radar, fire on the White House, create havoc on Wall Street, blow Hoover Dam, the presidential motorcade, the list goes on and on. We could never prepare a defense for it, not if they’re smart about it. We have to get it back.”
My turn to look away as my mind raced.
Dan read my expression. “What? What?”
“And you don’t have a clue who has the drone?”
“No. Bobby Ray has been selling arms across the border to the cartel. There’s huge money in it. He’s laundering his money through his custom motorcycle shop. We know that and haven’t been able to nail him yet. He’s too smart. We think Sonja’s law enforcement experience, her cool head, is keeping him out of prison.
“We developed information that an Arab, going through the cartel, is about to pay four million for the drone and a million apiece for the Hellfire missiles. Word came through a third party that Bobby Ray Kilburn was going to be the middleman in the deal. That’s why we have a wire up on Bobby Ray. But like I said, he’s smart. He hasn’t tripped up yet, and we’re coming down to the zero hour when they’re going to make the deal. That’s al
l of it, and my ass is now hung out a mile, so give. What do you have?”
“I know who has your drone.”
Dan grabbed my arm and spun me around. I thought he might kiss me.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“BRUNO, YOU HELP get me the drone back and I promise you the FBI will join you in that little game of crimes against The Sons, and they will wish they’d never heard your name. Tell me.”
“On the phone tap, you heard me mention Jumbo?”
“That’s right, John Ahern. We did a quick work-up on him. He’s into dope: coke and meth. Midlevel stuff, trying to break into the bigs, but he doesn’t have the brainpower or the muscle to do it. We couldn’t find any affiliation with Bobby Ray or any thefts in his background. None. Especially large, organized thefts like the one it took to grab a drone of that size, take it right off a moving train.”
“Put a team on Jumbo, twenty-four-seven.”
Dan went back to typing rapidly on his phone as he spoke. “Why? Talk to me.”
“Two, almost three years ago, I did train heists for Jumbo. Several of them.”
Dan looked up from his typing and whispered, “You’re kidding me. That’s good, real good.”
I nodded.
Dan gave up on the typing and dialed. “Listen,” he said as soon as someone answered, “I want to make this very clear. Pull Team Alpha and Baker off their targets and put them full-time on the target I just sent you in the text message. Tell the team leaders if they lose the target to go ahead and pack their bags, they’ll be on a midnight transfer to North Dakota. That’s right. Yes. Also, I want wiretaps on him with a pen register and a trap and trace. I’m on my way in with the probable cause for the wiretaps.”
He looked at me when he hung up. “You’re sure, Bruno?”
“Remember that train heist a few years ago, the entire train car loaded with computer chips?”
“That was this guy?”
I nodded. “He planned it, and I executed it for him.”
“Beautiful. You’re right, it’s got to be him. Though I can’t believe a pinhead like that has the brainpower.”
