Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “These came in from ESD an hour ago. Pretty easy to operate. You’ve gotta access the satellite. To do that, you use these six numbers first.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Then dial the regular ten-digit phone number you want. There’s an extra two-second delay because of the satellite scramblers.”

  He handed me another piece of paper with the SAT numbers for Tony, Emdee, Roger, Alexa, and himself. “You’re good to go,” he said.

  “Where are Rowdy and Snitch?”

  “Off minding the wool.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Women,” he explained. “Broadway’s wife Barbara is a Ph.D., teaches African studies at Mount Sac college. Emdee dates strippers. I think the current lamb is a lap dancer named Cinnamon or Ginger…one of those spices. She works at the Runway Strip club out by LAX.”

  “If they call in, tell Roger and Emdee after I check in downstairs, I’m going home. I have a coach’s meeting at five-thirty.”

  “A what?”

  “My son is being recruited for football at UCLA. Karl Dorrell is coming over. I gotta bust ass or I’m gonna miss it.”

  “No shit? Karl Dorrell? Really?” I’d finally said something that impressed this hard-eyed, boot-tough Cuban.

  I rode the Otis to three and found that the task force had slowed down since this morning. Half the troops were gone; the rest were talking softly into their phones.

  Agent Underwood was in his office getting ready to go home. His ostrich briefcase was open, and I couldn’t help but notice the oversized Glock with a big Freeze Motherfucker barrel.

  “Well, look who’s here. I thought you were too good for us. On a special assignment for the chief. Didn’t have time for our cheesy little serial murder case.”

  “When you urinated on my criminal profile, I figured we weren’t gonna make much of a team.”

  “What do you want?” he snapped, as he turned his back and continued to load things into the briefcase.

  “There’s an old murder case that’s touching this Vaughn Rolaine Fingertip kill,” I said. “Happened early last June. Vaughn’s sister, Arden, was beaten to death. Completely different MO from the Fingertip murders so it’s probably not the same doer. The victim was pounded into oblivion with a brass candlestick.”

  “Is that MO? I thought a rage-based act made it a signature. Of course, I keep getting this stuff all confused.” Really getting pissy now.

  “You’re right. It’s a signature.”

  I dropped the packet of crime scene pictures on his desk. He picked them up and thumbed through them.

  “My partner had the case. He put it together when he heard Vaughn Rolaine’s name.”

  “Your partner, the invisible Zack Farrell.” Underwood smiled. “How is that guy? Since he works for me, I keep meaning to meet him.”

  “He’s sick, Judd. He’s in the Queen of Angels’s psychiatric ward. He had a complete emotional breakdown yesterday.”

  Underwood stared at me for a long time. Then he nodded. “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Thanks.” We stood in awkward silence. “Anyway, by the middle of June, Detective Farrell had Vaughn Rolaine down as the key suspect, but wasn’t able to find him because he was homeless and moving around. I don’t know how this all fits, but it needs to be looked at.”

  “That the murder book?” He pointed to the blue binder in my hand.

  “Yeah, but it needs work. I’m taking it home to organize it. I’ll drop it off here in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  I held up the FedEx from Amazon and he frowned.

  “Motor City Monster,” I told him.

  “Since you’re not on the task force anymore, you can forget reading it.”

  “I know we didn’t hit it off, Judd, but you caught this Detroit killer. I never even got close to our Fingertip unsub. I’ll have it read by Monday, because it’s never too late to learn something. Good luck catching this guy.” I turned and walked out of his office.

  Driving home, I thought about Zack. He’d really perked up while sorting facts on Arden Rolaine’s murder. Even though most of his ideas seemed far-fetched, there were one or two that tracked. I liked the idea that the unsub might also be a homeless guy who got started by killing Vaughn Rolaine because he wanted the sister’s money. That one murder could have kicked him off.

  I got to our house in Venice at five-twenty-five. When I opened the door and walked in I saw Alexa, Chooch, and Delfina all sitting in chairs out in the backyard. I joined them on the patio and they turned to face me. Chooch looked angry.

  “I made it before five-thirty,” I defended. “Dorrell isn’t even here yet.”

  “The coach isn’t coming,” Chooch said.

  “Whatta you mean? Why not?”

  “The Athletic Department called,” Alexa said. “Apparently, he’s in a tug of war with Penn State over some blue-chip quarterback from Ohio. He’s fighting Joe Paterno for him so he moved that meeting up and cancelled us.”

  I could see the devastation on Chooch’s face. Delfina was holding his hand, trying to console him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Stuff happens. Don’t let it sink your boat, bud.”

  “But Dad, he said he wanted me. If Joe Paterno also wants this guy from Ohio, that probably means Penn State’s not going to want me. What if neither USC nor UCLA offers a scholarship? Then I’ve got nothing.” His voice was shaking.

  “We should talk about this,” I said. “Just you and me, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

  We went out the back gate onto the sidewalk that fronted the Grand Canal. Millions of spider-cracks crisscrossed the pavement under our feet; fissures in another man’s dream. My son followed me in silence.

  We made our way up onto the main arched bridge, climbing its subtle slope until we were at the top, looking down the long canal. Chooch stood next to me, his face awash in anger and frustration.

  “When I was sixteen, I didn’t believe in myself.” My voice was thin, blowing away from us in the weakening Santa Ana winds. “I wasn’t a true believer. Didn’t think I counted. I was an orphan who nobody wanted, and that fact was proven to me over and over because five different sets of foster parents all gave me back. So instead of working to improve myself, or understand why it was happening, I tried to tear down everybody around me. I had a code back then. ‘Do what I say or pay the price.’ But even when people did what I wanted, I didn’t enjoy it, because I knew they did it out of fear and not respect.”

  “Dad—”

  “No. Listen to me, son, because I don’t talk about this stuff often. Showing weakness to people I love is hard for me.”

  He fell quiet, so I continued. “Growing up, I knew if people thought I was weak, they’d take advantage of me. Underneath my bully’s bluster was a frightened kid who didn’t believe. I kept trying to impress people with threats. But I could see in their eyes that they weren’t impressed. They were simply tolerating me, and that just made me angrier.”

  I turned to face him. “Chooch, if there’s one thing I can try to give you, it’s this: You don’t have to impress anyone to be important. Around us you can be yourself. You can have big dreams, and all of us will help you live them.”

  “I do,” he said, softly. “Playing football is a dream.”

  “I’m worried that football isn’t as much of a dream as it is a device—a way for you to elevate yourself or prove yourself to others. For some reason, it looks like Coach Dorrell may choose this other guy over you. Coach Carroll likes you, but hasn’t offered you a scholarship yet, and he might not. Same with Penn State. So right now you don’t feel so important anymore. But try and think of it this way. You’re the sum of all your experience and your experiences have helped forge who you are. If you were valuable yesterday, then regardless of what anybody else thinks, you’re valuable today. It doesn’t matter what Coach Dorrell or Coach Carroll do. It doesn’t change who and what you are, unless you let it. Everybody su
ffers defeats, son. You’ll come to realize someday, that it’s your defeats that define your victories. The way to true happiness in life is to love what you’re doing, not how well other people say you’re doing it. It’s an important distinction.”

  Chooch stood looking down stoically at the wind-ruffled water on the Grand Canal.

  “Even if you don’t get an athletic scholarship to any university, and you go to one of these schools as a walk-on, if you really love the game, love the process; you will succeed. Maybe not in exactly the way you once thought, but success will come.”

  My son was looking at me now, his face a strange mixture of emotions.

  “But you won’t ever be happy if you let other people grade your paper, Chooch. It has to come from inside you. You’ve got to be a believer before anyone else can believe.

  “And you think that I play ball just so other people will think I’m a big deal?”

  “Nothing in life is all one thing or all the other. In failure, there can also be accomplishment. In jealousy, there is usually envy and respect. The trick is to get the balance right. I think some things got out of balance for you this year.”

  He stood beside me, his eyes again fixed on the water, pondering my words.

  “In whatever you choose to do, I want you to compete, and hopefully you will succeed. But most of all, I want you to love the process, because that’s where happiness lies.”

  “So it’s not important that Coach Dorrell cancelled his visit?”

  “Not in the long run.”

  “What if he doesn’t reschedule? And what if I don’t hear back from USC either?”

  “We can only play our game. We can’t play anybody else’s. You are a lot of things, Chooch. You are a combination of cultures and emotions. Your genes come from me, and your mother, Sandy. Alexa and I try to be good role models and show you how to behave through actions, not just words. But you get to choose what, and who, you want to be. You get to decide how you want to behave.”

  “I should calm down?” he said softly.

  “Yep. And you gotta believe.” I put my arm around him. “If it’s meant to be, it’s gonna happen.”

  36

  At seven that evening I was at my desk in the den working on the Arden Rolaine homicide book. As I went through the old case notes, trying to put them in chronological order, I noticed a margin note that read, “Re-interview VR about June 3rd timeline.”

  I wondered if VR was shorthand for Victim’s Relative like in Cindy Blackman’s notes, or if it stood for Vaughn Rolaine, the victim’s brother. Since Zack said he was never able to locate Arden’s brother, I started looking around through all this disorganization for interviews he’d done with other family members.

  As I was doing this, the doorbell rang. I got up from the desk, walked to the front door and peered through the peephole. The distorted images of Emdee Perry and Roger Broadway were stretched comically in the fish-eye lens. I opened the door and saw they were both decked out in snazzy Lakers gear—purple and gold jackets and hats. Roger handed me a ticket.

  “What’s this?”

  “Lakers game,” Broadway said. “Staples Center. Ninth row. We scored the seats from the Mexican Embassy. For some Third World reason, the se hablas are Clippers’ fans. Never use their Lakers’ seats.”

  I looked at the ticket. It was for the Spurs game, eight o’-clock tonight.

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  Emdee drawled, “We like you okay, Scully, but we sure as shit wouldn’t waste great Lakers tickets on you ’less we had to. Tip-off’s in fifty minutes. Giddy-up, Joe Bob.”

  “Something’s going down?”

  They looked at each other in disbelief.

  I told Alexa what was up, grabbed a jacket, and headed out. Roger and Emdee were waiting in a motor pool Navigator with smoked windows. I climbed in the backseat and Roger steered the black SUV up OceanAvenue to the 10 freeway. Once we were heading east, Perry turned and handed me the transmitter Roger and I had taken off the Fairlane.

  “ESD found out who made that little pastry,” he said. “Designed by a private firm here in L.A. name of Americypher Technologies.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “It was founded in ’ninety-three by a Jewish cat named Calvin Lerner,” Roger said. “Man’s got an interesting history. In ’ninety-five Lerner gave up his Israeli passport and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. This was very good news because Americypher specializes in state-of-the-art listening devices and transmitters. It turns out Uncle Sam is one of their biggest customers.”

  “We don’t make our own surveillance equipment?” I was a little surprised that we would subcontract out work like that.

  “It all comes down to horseshit and gun smoke in field operations,” Emdee drawled.

  Roger picked up the story again. “About two years ago Calvin Lerner, who still owned controlling interest in Americypher, went missing on the Stanislaus River in Central California during a trout fishing trip. Wandered off up the river alone, and did a Beam me up, Scottie. Never found any trace of him. No tracks, no blood, no body. His widow took over running the company. Americypher is still going strong.”

  “Americypher sounds like it should be a good American outfit,” I said.

  Emdee smiled. “One a the things ya learn working this beat is the more American a company sounds, the less Americans are probably involved with it.

  “The bugs Americypher makes are years ahead of the curve. That’s one of them,” Broadway said, pointing to the tiny transmitter in Emdee’s hand. “They’re designed to use miniature low-volt batteries with twenty-year lives, but apparently because of the low voltage they’re a bitch to install. The way we hear it, the engineers from Americypher go out on black-bag installations to help their customers plant these things.”

  Now I saw where this was going. “And you think since Americypher knows where the bugs are located, they could sell that information.”

  Broadway said, “Counterintelligence plays a big part in world politics.”

  “But would Americypher double-cross big federal clients like Homeland Security and the FBI?”

  “The old team put together by Calvin Lerner probably wouldn’t,” Roger said. “But nobody knows much about his widow. She’s still an Israeli. Never took the pledge of allegiance. We just cranked up a new investigation on Americypher. The dicks in Financial Crimes are gonna hit that piñata and see if it spits out any candy.”

  We pulled into VIP parking at the Staples Center and ten minutes later I was sitting in the best seat I’d ever had at that arena. Nine rows up, center court. The tip-off was at eight o’clock sharp.

  While I watched the game, Broadway and Perry took turns getting up and going to the bathroom, or out to buy beers. Something was definitely up, but when I asked them what, they waved it off. I decided to just wait them out. Whatever we were doing here, it had nothing to do with the Lakers.

  At the half the home team was only up by three points. Fans were stretching and going out to the concession stands. Broadway said he wanted another hotdog and headed toward the exit.

  Ten minutes later, Perry grabbed my arm. “We’re leaving,” he announced.

  “We need to wait for Roger,” I said. “He’s getting food.”

  “Roger’s in the car. Come on.”

  We hurried up the steps through the midlevel tunnel. As we joined the crowd milling toward the food courts I caught a glimpse of the same bald-headed man in the blue blazer who had come to my phony funeral. He was now wearing a Lakers jacket and was about twenty people ahead of us, moving toward the exit.

  “Isn’t that Eddie Ringerman?” I asked.

  “Small fucking world,” Emdee said as he pulled me along.

  “Why don’t you spit it out? What’s going on?”

  He hesitated, then said, “We got direct orders from the chief not to confide in the competition, but he didn’t say we couldn’t follow ’em. Ringerman’s a rabid Lakers fan, but
if our boy gets up to leave with the game in doubt, something’s goin’ down. So we follow Ringerman, see if we can catch him in politicus flagrante. Then we’ll jerk a knot in his tail and make the boy give up something.”

  Ringerman headed out the main entrance onto the street, then crossed with the light to the east parking lot and got into a gray Lincoln.

  Perry still had my arm, pulling me along. “Hustle up,” he said. “Game’s on.”

  37

  Broadway drove the Navigator out of Staples VIP parking and onto the city streets. I couldn’t see the gray Lincoln Town Car that Ringerman was driving. We’d only been following it for three minutes and already we’d lost sight of him.

  “I like a nice, loose tail,” I said, “but isn’t it usually a good idea to keep the target in sight?”

  Broadway opened the glove compartment revealing an LD screen. He turned it on and a city map came up displaying a two-mile moving grid. I could see a red light flashing down Fourth Street towards the freeway.

  “Satellite tracking,” Broadway explained. “The feds aren’t the only ones with goodies. While you and Perry were watching the game, I hung a pill on Eddie’s ride. We’re following him from outer space.”

  We followed the embassy car from a mile back as it turned off the Hollywood Freeway at Highland, then shot across Fountain and down the hill on Fairfax. We turned on Melrose and were right back where Yuri’s market had once stood. The center of Russian Town.

  This three-block area was the L.A. version of New York’s Brighton Beach. Russian liquor stores featuring signs advertising expensive brands of Yuri Dolgoruki and Charodei vodka. Restaurants with names like Sergi’s and Shura’s dotted the landscape. Posters were plastered everywhere advertising an upcoming Svetlana Vetrova concert.

  Roger finally pulled up across the street from a restaurant called the Russian Roulette. It was on Melrose at the west end of Russian Town, nestled close to the boundary of Beverly Hills. The building was stucco, but had a slanted roof with fancy trim. I spotted Ringerman’s gray Lincoln in a jammed-to-overflowing parking lot.