Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “How’d the funeral go?” she said, her eyes still on the printouts, not giving me her full attention.

  I pushed past that question, closed the door, and crossed to her desk.

  “Honey, I haven’t asked you for anything since you got this job but I’m about to break that rule.”

  “Please don’t,” she said looking at me with new, hard-edged determination.

  I was her husband, and at home, there wasn’t much we couldn’t find a way to agree on. But we had carefully defined our two worlds. On the job she was my boss and we always found a way to keep it completely professional.

  “Zack?” she asked, wearily.

  I nodded.

  She pushed the stack of crime stats aside and rubbed her eyes for a minute before looking up. The expression that formed when her hands came away was polite disinterest. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” I started by saying. “I owe this guy. We both owe him.”

  “How do I owe him? I never really knew him all that well until you two partnered up, and I’m just finding out he was already a big time lush by then. He needs a twelve step program.”

  “You owe him because he saved me. If he hadn’t been there for me in the Valley, then there would be no us. I know he’s behaving badly and something is going really wrong inside him, but I can’t just walk away.”

  “Let’s get something straight. Zack Farrell is only one of two hundred detectives under my command. If I give him a pass, or look the other way, how in the name of God can I drop the hammer on the next drunk who stumbles through here? We have citizens to protect. This is a violent city.” She pushed the crime stats across the desk toward me. “I’m supposed to be a firewall between all this and the law-abiding citizens we protect. How do I do that if I don’t maintain guidelines and standards?”

  “Honey, don’t preach the police manual at me.”

  She just stared.

  “Okay, look. It’s complicated, but here’s my problem. I’m not sure I really knew Zack back then. I was so out of it, I wasn’t focused on much. Now that I am, I’m not sure I like what I see. But as a man, I can’t accept what I accepted from him back then and not give something back. This is a debt and I’ve got to find some answer I can live with or it will change the way I view myself.”

  She considered this, then sighed loudly. “Where is he?”

  “Right outside your door. He’s drunk. Just got through cussing out half the task force. For all I know, one of them has already given him up to Underwood. The whole thing is out of control, but I’ve gotta try. He might be suicidal. I can’t just stand around and watch him auger in.”

  She looked at me for a moment before picking up her phone and dialing a number.

  “This is Lieutenant Scully in the Detective Bureau. Notify the Psychiatric section I want a two-man team to come to my office and pick up one of my detectives. I’m ordering a three-day hospital evaluation.” She waited, then said, “He’s undergoing extreme stress, both marital and financial, possibly suicidal. I want him held in the secure wing at Queen of Angels until you can make a determination. All reports on his condition are to be released only to my office.” She waited again, then said, “Thanks.”

  She hung up and fixed me with one of her no-bullshit-all-business stares. “This puts him in the system, Shane. If he flunks the psych review, he’s gonna get flagged. All this does is take him out of action for three days and keep him from doing something foolish. Maybe he comes back to us or maybe he gets marked unfit for duty. If that happens, he gets the gate.”

  “With a medical waiver he could go out on early retirement without affecting his pension.”

  “That would be up to Tony, the Commission, and the Bureau of Professional Standards,” which was our new media-friendly name for Internal Affairs. I could see she was angry. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work,” she added.

  Thirty minutes later, two psychiatric paramedics arrived. Zack was led into the elevator. Just before the door closed, he turned and looked at me, a stunned, betrayed expression on his swollen face.

  21

  “What’s with all these embassy cars? Where’s our intel on these people?”

  Underwood was pissed, studying the digital photo blow-ups from the funeral. Brendan Villalobos, Mace Ward, Ruben Bola and I were crowded in his office.

  The idea that foreign embassies might lodge a career-ending complaint in the federal hierarchy definitely had Underwood worried. It was no fun being bait at the bottom of the political aquarium. While Underwood bitched about our inefficiency, I tried to get the image of Zack’s swollen, disillusioned face to retreat to some dark place in the back of my mind.

  “We gotta find out who these fucking people are,” Underwood said.

  “This big guy dressed in the tweed jacket left in a car from the Russian Embassy,” Villalobos said, pointing at the pictures.

  Ruben Bola followed his lead and picked up two photos. “This bald guy in the blue blazer left in an Israeli embassy car. The foxy blonde in the business suit was in a silver Jag. We ran her plates but they came back to a company called Allied Freight Forwarding. Answering machine, post office box address. Probably a phone drop.”

  Brendan Villalobos picked up photos of the guys wearing Forest Lawn jumpsuits. “Anybody been able to identify these two cream machines?” he asked.

  The African American was implausibly handsome. The shot of his partner showed a thin, narrow-waisted white guy with tattoos. He had an uneven, sandy flattop that looked like he’d done it himself with hedge shears.

  “Where’s their car?” Brendan asked.

  I rummaged around and found a shot of an old Dodge Charger pulling out of the lot. Darleen and Kyle had printed several blow-ups of the rear bumper giving us a readable view of the license plate. “California plate Ida-Mae-Victor three-seven-five,” I said. “It came back to somebody named Leland Zant.”

  “And?” Agent Orange had lost patience with us.

  “Extensive drug record,” Ruben added quickly, keeping his eyes on his notes. “Guy changes addresses a lot. Sally’s trying to dig through the clutter and get a current.”

  As if on cue, there was a knock on the door and Sally Quinn stuck her head in. “Zant is doing a third strike in Soledad. He’s been up there since last August.”

  “So if he’s in the cooler, who’s driving this Charger?” Underwood barked. “Come on, don’t make me pull it out in scraps.”

  Sally continued, “Zant went down for moving forty kilos of cut. With that much weight, we popped him for felony dealing and the car became an LAPD asset seizure. The registration just transferred.”

  “This Charger is an LAPD undercover?” Underwood frowned.

  “Looks like it, sir,” Sally answered.

  “So keep going…. Who was driving it? Getting a fullreport outta you is worse than dental surgery.”

  Detective Quinn was turning red with anger, but to her credit, her expression didn’t change. She took a breath and held his gaze. “It was checked out of our motor pool to CTB.”

  “I give up.” Underwood was getting snotty now.

  “Counter Terrorism Bureau,” she clarified. “They’re upstairs on four.”

  Underwood started rubbing his forehead with a freckled hand. “What the hell is going on here? Did we just accidentally stumble into some multinational anti-terrorism case?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Who in CTB checked the car out of your motor pool?” he asked Sally, holding up the two pictures of the Forest Lawn workers. “Was it these two? Did you get their names or did you even bother to ask?”

  “Don’t know who they are, sir. It was checked out on what they call a blind borrow.” Detective Quinn’s voice was strained. She’d had her fill.

  “I wanta know who these two people are. If they’re cops, I want their names.” Underwood was apoplectic, waving the digital pictures at us.

  After a long silence
, I volunteered. “Homicide Special shares the floor with CTB. I’ve gotten to know a few people. You want, I could wander around up there and see if I can find out who these guys are.”

  “Hey…that sure sounds like a plan.” Underwood rolled his eyes in undisguised frustration.

  I glanced at my fellow task force members. They all wore deadpans that would have won poker tournaments in Vegas.

  I went upstairs and wandered around with our digital prints stashed out of sight in a manila folder. CTB was divided into two sections. The operational side was a regular squad room with partitions, which housed your basic, high-testosterone, door-kicking commando types. Across the main aisle from them was the Intelligence Section. It was a cluttered cube farm full of nerdy boys and girls with fluorescent tans, plastic belts, and intense expressions.

  The way it was explained to me, CTB Intelligence worked on background, accessing computer data banks, and looking for known associates of terrorist cell members. Once a new list of potential bomb throwers was compiled, Intelligence would turn it over to Operations. Operations would then make a determination on which targets looked promising and the lieutenant in charge would assign one of the surveillance squads for a twenty-four-hour look-see. Sometimes they’d spot the target buying drugs. Sometimes they were conspiring with other known terrorists or buying street guns. Sometimes they were just picking up prostitutes. Whatever the crime, Operations would arrest them and pull them in for questioning.

  What CTB had learned since 9/11, was that once a terrorist was arrested, most hardcore operations like Al Qaeda would never deal with him again. One minor bust, even one that didn’t stick, eliminated a cell member forever. As a result, the terrorist cells were so busy rebuilding, they didn’t get around to running plays.

  I walked slowly down the corridors looking for a friendly face, somebody that I could show my packet of photos to. Then I looked up. Coming right toward me was the handsome black detective from Forest Lawn. He was now wearing a snazzy designer suit with an open-collared blue silk shirt. Fruity cologne trailed him like expensive exhaust. After he passed, the guy flicked an F-stop glance back in my direction.

  We have ignition.

  I followed him into his small, cluttered cubicle. He was taking off his coat and settling behind his desk as I came through the doorway.

  “Something I can do for you?” he asked.

  Instead of answering, I dropped his picture on the desk in front of him.

  22

  I settled into the chair on the opposite side of the partner’s desk in his cubicle, and gave him my best blank stare.

  There was a long moment while he tried to decide how he wanted to play it. I obviously wasn’t going to go away, so he heaved a deep sigh and said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  He was one of those guys who had scored big in the gene pool. Mocha skin, square jaw, white teeth, piercing black eyes. But there was also a healthy dose of arrogance.

  I reached into my back pocket, fished out my worn leather badge case and dropped it onto the desktop between us. He did the same. Then we each slid them across the three-foot polished surface at each other.

  He was Roger Broadway, Detective III. On the job since ’87. The picture looked like it came out of a modeling portfolio. We airmailed our creds back, both plucking badge cases out of the air simultaneously.

  “You don’t have a clue what you stumbled into, Scully. Your John Doe is in good hands. Cut your losses.” I gave him more attitude so he continued. “This is a CTB special op. My best advice is, dial it way down, go back to that task force piñata party you got going, and forget this.”

  “That’s kinda shitty advice, Roger. Especially since I’m working a front-page serial murder, and I got half the deputy chiefs in this building walking around in my asshole with flashlights.” I tapped a picture of the coffin. “So in the spirit of interdivisional cooperation, why don’t you start by putting a hat on this guy for me?”

  “He ain’t Mike Eisner,” Broadway said, holding my gaze. “And he also ain’t one of your Fingertip murders. He’s an international intelligence asset. Beyond that, you don’t have to know.”

  I reached into the envelope and pulled out the rest of the pictures and dropped them onto the desk. “This was a very eclectic turnout.”

  He picked up the pictures of the lumbering Russian in the brown tweed, and the bald man in the blue blazer from the Israeli embassy. He studied them for a second before he shrugged and handed them back to me.

  “I want some answers,” I said. “Why were you there, and why did all these embassy people show up?”

  “Leave it be,” he said softly.

  Yeah, right… I thought. Pushing on then…

  “I think my John Doe victim is a foreign national, possibly Russian. Maybe even Odessa Mafia. I agree, he’s not one of the Fingertip murders, but my bosses want me to keep him in the mix. If I stumbled into a CTB covert op, I can walk softly, but this is still my one-eighty-seven, and the sixth floor wants it put down. So if you hardball me, I’ll be forced to take it to Deputy Chief Ramsey and we can do this hair-pulling thing in his office.”

  “Great White Mike can’t cover you,” he said, but there was worry flickering in his coal-black eyes.

  “Help me and I’ll help you. I have no desire to bitch up your investigation, but I’m not going away, especially after throwing this funeral and watching half the spooks in L.A. show up.”

  “I hope that ain’t no racial epithet.” A smile found the corner of his mouth. “Hate to have to one-eighty-one your Gumby white-slice ass.” Talking about an Internal Affairs complaint.

  “Your best bet of containing me is to trade with me, Roger.”

  “Right. And once that happens and you share our covert information with that buncha literary hopefuls downstairs, how long till it’s on sale at Amazon?”

  “I’ll keep what you tell me strictly between us.”

  A bald-faced lie, because I knew I probably couldn’t do that. I had to report this meeting to Underwood, and he could do anything he pleased with the information. My last line of defense was Alexa, but right now my beautiful wife wasn’t all that happy with me. However, now wasn’t the time to hesitate.

  I pulled out the picture of the attractive blonde who had been sitting in the back of the church and showed it to him. “Teammate?” I asked.

  He didn’t take the picture out of my hand, but I saw another flicker of something in his black eyes.

  Then a shadow fell over me. I looked up. Standing in the doorway was his partner—pencil-thin, bad haircut, hips like a wasp, chewing a soggy toothpick.

  “You’re in my chair, pard.” His Southern accent was thick as pork gravy. All that was missing was the banjo solo from Deliverance.

  I stood up and handed him the packet of pictures. He sorted through them quickly.

  “That puts some hair in the biscuits, don’t it, Rog?” He glanced over at Broadway.

  “I’m Scully, Homicide Special.”

  “We know who you are, Joe Bob,” he drawled around his toothpick. “You’re the dummy running that mess down on three.”

  “Not running it anymore. We have a cool new FBI leader. Lunar calendars, party hats. Come on down and get a shit cupcake.”

  Broadway said, “This is my partner, Emdee Perry. Emdee is a name, not initials. This cracker’s from the hills a South Carolina, so he ain’t above burnin’ a cross on your lawn. But the motherfucker sure knows how to kick up a shed.”

  “This cracker-bashin’ Oreo finally got somethin’ right,” Emdee deadpanned.

  I knew they were just stalling, putting up smoke, doing the dozens.

  Broadway said, “Detective Scully’s wondering who he was getting set to bury. That’s how far off the pace the boy is.”

  Perry studied me, rolling the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “We ain’t actually getting set t’deal with this fool, are we, Snitch?”

  Then I knew who they were. They had
flashy nicknames—Rowdy and Snitch. Two colorful characters who were fast becoming LAPD legends.

  “Don’t make me take this to Deputy Chief Ramsey,” I said. “He has big pressure coming down from the super chief. He won’t like me being stonewalled.”

  “Great White Mike can shit in his hat,” Broadway said. “We report to Deputy Chief Talmadge Burke in Support Services, and he doesn’t like us to stand around and yap about secure cases with people who ain’t been baptized.”

  “I can’t believe you two humps want to start a turf war over a little deal like who my dead guy is. I’m gonna find out anyway.”

  Broadway and Perry exchanged some kind of subliminal look. The trick for them was to only give me info I would eventually discover on my own, and keep the rest hidden. My job was to run a good bluff and get things they shouldn’t reveal.

  Finally, Roger Broadway leaned back in his chair. “Your stiff is named Davide Andrazack. He’s an Israeli black ops agent working for the Mossad. End of story.”

  “Except the guy had a contact lens for an eye condition called Keracotonus. According to our lab he was damn near blind. Are you two trying to tell me that a world-class black ops service like the Mossad is down to hiring blind guys?”

  Emdee Perry cleared his throat, then threw the chewed toothpick into the wastebasket. “Since his eyes went bad, Andrazack don’t work black ops no more,” he said. “These days he’s more of what you’d call an electronic plumber. Fixes computer leaks.”

  “Before he caught the big bus, he was their best guy for E-ops,” Broadway said. “A master cracker.” He glanced at Emdee. “A term of endearment.” Emdee bowed his head magnanimously.

  “Our file on him says he once penetrated Level Four Pentagon security. We think he was in the U.S. scoping the Israeli computers looking for a leak at their embassy.”