The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset)

by Doug Richardson

  Power failure.

  Frosty stood his ground, fully expecting the juice to reignite, feeding the banks of lamps and the all-important agitating fans. East and west, the battery-operated exit lights kicked on, spraying a weak flood of incandescence into the expanse.

  The minutes passed as a usually collected Frosty quickly tested the limits of his anxiety. A smart farmer would have been prepared for such a disaster. Once power to the grow lamps was lost, it would only be a matter of minutes before the farmer initiated a diesel-powered backup generator. A push of an ignition button and presto—all power would be restored as long as there was fuel to burn. After his extensive research on raising indoor crops, Frosty had strongly suggested to Julius that a proper diesel generator be added to the purchase list.

  But Julius had balked.

  The boss’s argument had been that generators made noise and the diesel units belched readable exhaust. Any uninvited attention to his hydroponic pot farm would be nothing less than disastrous. No. The pot crop would be dependent on the single source of electricity provided by Julius’s partners at the DWP. Since the giant public utility was delivering the juice via underground conduit, uninterrupted service was virtually guaranteed.

  “Only guarantee in life is that God is great and he loves you like the true child we all are.”

  His mother’s words echoed in Frosty’s ears and soul. Such was what he remembered every time anybody uttered or insinuated a guarantee of any flavor. From Julius to street hustlers to ads on the TV.

  Guarantee? Sheeeiiiiiiiiiit.

  40

  Blah de blah blah de blah blah blah…

  Cat Rincon felt stiff. Her run and scuffle with that Rose Bowl gate had caught up to her in the form of an ache that encompassed her entire body. No matter how she tried to situate herself at her Indian teak conference table–upright or tilted back, resting her shoulders in the red leather chair—relief only came in ten-second intervals before her body demanded she redistribute her one-hundred-and-two pounds yet again.

  She sat across from a quartet of private equity investors, the chattiest and most alpha of them a bulldog-looking, Chinese-American with ties to Hong Kong and Beijing. He was coiffed and reeked of offshore deals. She’d heard the pitch so many times before: a consulting deal with stock options in exchange for guiding the money men through strategic commercial property buys across the Southland.

  Blah de blah blah de blah blah blah…

  Cat would surely say yes to the deal. But with the usual caveat that she’d be allowed to pluck them and their über rich backers for some political cash to funnel wherever it might best benefit Cat Rincon. The rest would be up to the lawyers.

  The business pitch droned on. Her eyes drifted out her fourth-floor corner suite’s windows. The forty-two-story skyscraper stood atop Bunker Hill and sported views of the other sparkling high-rises that sprouted from the downtown zip code. Above the rooftops and swaying palms stood the low rolling hills of Echo Park and Silverlake, replete with the world-famous Hollywood sign etched against the most distant peak.

  “Besides channels for the money from the mainland,” claimed the chatty investment manager, “there’s already a lot of money here, brought over by all the expats who bought residences in Arcadia and San Gabriel and Sierra Madre. Those people got bank and no place they trust to put it.”

  “Would you excuse me to go to the ladies room for a moment?” asked Cat. Not waiting for an answer, she painfully pushed herself up and trod toward the frosted-glass door.

  Still teacup-sized in her five-inch pumps, she drove her heels like a race car driver, angling around the sunny corners of her office suite. She exited through a side door into the public corridor and performed a reverse S-turn into the women’s bathroom. Once there she waited for the door to shut, then checked to make certain she was alone before shouting:

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

  Cat wasn’t screaming at the investors she’d left behind in her suite, but at the competing demands in her head.

  It’s not them, Cat. It’s everything else.

  Hands on her hips, she released a windy sigh. A chill darted up her spine. She tried to shake it off with a couple of vertical hops while swinging her arms back and forth. Then as if her bladder recognized the opportunity, she shut herself inside one of the three available stalls, pushed her panties to her knees and sat for a prolonged pee. She stared at the latched swinging door two feet in front of her. It had recently been replaced with a panel she surmised must have been from a men’s room somewhere else in the building. Though painted over in coats of semi-gloss, the scratched graffiti was still readable.

  The hollowness of the bathroom only added to Cat’s over-arching concerns. She needed to calm her brain and problem solve. Somehow get ahead of the situation. After all, business—Cat’s business—was a game of chess. Moves and countermoves. She’d been threatened. Cornered. How she maneuvered next might mean the difference between living and dying. With the situation so obviously dire, Cat weirdly wondered why the hell her eyes were fixated on a remnant of scored graffiti.

  life is hard. it’s even harder if you’re stupid.

  Cat felt the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile. The tension in her eased, if only a fraction. Then while snapping off a few squares of toilet paper, she felt the pressure change as the ladies room door opened and shut—a prompt of sorts to re-affix her business mask and get on with her day. Only through forward motion would a solution come for what chilled her.

  She unlatched the door and…

  “Isn’t this how we met?” echoed a familiar voice.

  Cat was so startled the elevated heel of her right pump nearly twisted underneath her. She caught herself against the stall’s jamb and regained her equilibrium.

  “You asshole!”

  Julius Colón glistened as if he’d just finished a workout. His clinging shorts and undersized t-shirt were smudged in sweat. At the sink, he cupped and wet his hands before using the moisture to cool his curly scalp.

  “Bathroom, remember?” reminded Julius. “That’s how you and me got started in this.”

  “So?”

  “Tell me you remember.”

  “I got people in my office,” shifted Cat. “And they’re waiting on me.”

  “You should try answering your phone.”

  “Been a little distracted, as you might imagine.”

  “How’d we meet?” returned Julius before blocking the door. He leaned against it, arms crossed. Waiting.

  “ Julius—”

  “Gotta ask you again?”

  “I remember, okay?” she finally replied. “I remember.”

  Oil Can Harry’s. That much Cat could clearly recall. She and Julius had first met at the gay nightclub in Studio City. Miles north of his usual West Hollywood trolling grounds, Julius had made a rare trip beyond the Hollywood Hills and Mulholland Drive to the sleepy San Fernando Valley. There on Ventura Boulevard was a warehouse-styled bar that advertised theme nights. One such evening, Cat had trailed a pair of downtown girlfriends from a city councilman’s office on the promise of country line dancing. The craze, in deep decline since it’s eighties heyday, had been resurrected at Harry’s. Gay men along with professional women seeking to swing and two-step with handsome hunks would gather, guzzle beer from long-neck bottles, and dance themselves silly to ear-thumping country beats.

  Julius had arrived on a whim. He’d read that the cruising scene in the Valley was more akin to finding hookups in white-bread Laguna Beach. Julius had a taste for blonde men. A penchant he cribbed Caucasian Persuasion. When he imagined a club full of men engaged in line dancing, he pictured straw-colored hair spilling out from beneath sweaty Stetsons.

  As it worked out, his only Oil Can Harry’s connection was with a teacup-sized “hot tamale” in the unisex bathroom. After a chance meeting on the dance floor, Cat and Julius were re-introduced at the noisy bar. Julius’s sexual appetite was momentarily overwhelmed by opportunity. Unwi
lling to let the real estate mistress go, he’d chased her into the bathroom and pleaded for five minutes of her undivided attention.

  Their impromptu meeting moved to the quiet of a darkened parking lot. Julius impressed her with his very specific interest in acquiring strip malls. With strategic locations, he argued, an entrepreneur with the right connections could open a chain of medical marijuana dispensaries—or collectives. But state and city regulations didn’t permit franchising. Yet.

  “I wanna be the Starbucks of pot shops,” he’d pitched. “Everybody knows that full legalizing is gonna happen. Legalizing means the man with the locations and the money to back his weed game is gonna be the man with all the leverage. Ya feel me?”

  And feel him she did.

  Cat Rincon was more than impressed. Not that she hadn’t met a fair measure of ambitious men. The city was thick with swinging dicks with big plans. And she’d been more than willing to use her body to stroke as many egos as required to meet her own designs on power. Yet in Julius, she’d been exposed to a different flavor of man—queer and completely disinterested in her sex—who possessed a unique vision. Not to build his empire by accessing entrée to the Los Angeles power elite. But on his own moxy, from the gutters to the curbs to the street and up.

  “But you’re an obvious criminal,” she’d argued, if only as a tease.

  “Know anyone in City Hall who’s not a gangsta?” he’d fired back.

  “No. But the criminals in City Hall are pretty much protected.”

  “Why you think I’m talking to you?”

  It had been five years since the meeting at Oil Can Harry’s. How far they had come...or devolved. In that half decade Cat had introduced the Compton gangster to attorneys who best understood the ever-evolving legal ins and outs of owning and operating marijuana dispensaries. And with help from Cat’s real estate connections, Julius had expanded his strip mall holdings from as far east as Glendora all the way to Redondo Beach. By using age-old fronting schemes as platforms for starting up seventeen different collectives—each with its own clever shingle like The Kush Kollective, Cannabis King, and Mary Jane’s Joint—Julius had laid the footprints for the franchise he hoped to eventually brand as BudStop.

  That would have been enough for Julius.

  Then came a Sunday at Compton’s new Blue Line Farmers Market—one of the many grower-friendly street fairs which cropped up on Southland weekends. An idea hit Julius. Rather than buying his pot from collectives—supposed non-profits—his earnings would be even more robust in a farm-to-table model. He could dispense with the profit-sucking-middle man.

  The rest would be logistics.

  “You cut my power,” angered Julius, not ceding his blockade of the ladies room door.

  “Cut what?” replied Cat. “I didn’t cut anything.”

  “You Water and Power or what?”

  “You killed Hal Solomon?” she pressed.

  “We didn’t need him.”

  “Are you kidding—” Cat stomped her heels. “He was our backstop!”

  “He was your protection. Now we back to a mo’ better power balance. You ’n’ me. We protect each other.”

  “Is that why you threatened me?”

  “Was nothin’ much,” defended Julius. “Just in case you was wondering where you ’n’ me stood.”

  “We’re in a fuckin’ bathroom. Again.”

  “Why you cut the power?”

  “I didn’t cut shit!”

  “Then why our farm lose its juice?” Julius was leaning in. “Goin’ on three hours with nothin’.”

  “I wasn’t informed. I’ve been in meetings. I’ll look into it.”

  “Water and Power. That’s your end of shit.”

  “It’s a hiccup. Lemme talk to my guy.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Julius, once again leaning back against the door, arms folded over his pronounced pectorals.

  Cat thought of staring him down. Putting up a pose of equal inflexibility. Perhaps Julius would step off. Give her room to maneuver. Before she could decide, her subconscious was already acquiescing as she pinched her cellphone between her right thumb and forefinger and slipped it out from the waistband of her skirt. She auto-dialed Tim Gilligan’s burner phone.

  “What’s your guy’s name?” queried Julius.

  “Nuh uh.” Cat shook her head. “That’s my side of the fence.”

  “That dead Jew was on your side of the fence,” he warned.

  “It’s me,” Cat said, holding up a shut-up index finger to Julius. “What’s going on with the power?”

  Julius regarded her every twitch as she listened to the unknown man at the other end of her phone call. He studied her, patiently waiting for a tell—some giveaway in her body language or a betrayed bit of dialogue that informed she was playing him.

  Cat clicked off.

  “It’s temporary,” she said.

  “Tell that to my crop.”

  “Thought it was our crop,” she not-so-playfully replied. “My guy has a work around.”

  “How long?” pressed Julius. “Cuz hydroponics don’t do so good without no grow lights.”

  “Soon,” said Cat, easing toward the bathroom door. “Now can I get back to my meeting?”

  Julius cocked his head to the side. As if he wanted to view a slightly different, but carefully procured angle of his business partner. He was still seeking a tell. And Cat had given him none. Julius menaced closer to her. What he lacked in vertical imposition, he more than made up for in muscle mass, especially when closing in on a woman as tiny as Cat. Even in those five-inch heels, she was virtually dwarfed.

  Not since they had line danced at Oil Can Harry’s had one been so close to the other. As he neared, Cat reflexively froze all but her face, from which she projected a scowl of lip-pressed fury. Undeterred, and while keeping his eyes zeroed on her semi-dilated pupils, Julius bent his knees slightly before slowly hooking a hand underneath her skirt. He felt her breathing cease. In his ear, he detected hardly an exhaled air molecule. When his fingertips felt her inner thigh, he itsy-bitsy-spider-walked three of his digits upward until he was touching the lace mesh of her panties. Though his probe was gentle, his words were the true assault.

  “I may be a fag,” he hissed. “But if I have to, I will surely fuck you. Ya feel me?”

  “Yes…” she quavered, the tremble of her voice providing tell enough for Julius to walk away.

  “Have a nice day,” he said, removing his hand and allowing her to slip past him to the door. He barked behind her, “And don’t forget to turn on my ’lectricity!”

  41

  “Night damn three, Little Miss Trainee gets herself in a shootout at the O.K. housing projects.”

  “I didn’t get myself into anything,” defended Shia. “Trainees ride the passenger seat. Or have you forgotten?”

  After Shia was relieved of her service sidearm in lieu of the mandatory and certain-to-be-laborious, post-shooting investigation, she’d been separated from Lucky as per Sheriffs’ policy and delivered by ambulance to Martin Luther King Hospital, where she was cleared and sent home. During the Thursday morning drive back to her condo she’d called Steve Wimminger. Her verbal debrief to the U.S. Attorney had lasted nearly the entire commute from 120th Street to her North Hollywood address. Instead of risking losing the mobile signal, Shia parked on the street in front of her corner Starbucks. It was there, while she subconsciously counted the hipster to non-hipster passersby, she received an unwanted lip-lashing from the federal prosecutor.

  “You think that dumpster video gets me a Grand Jury? Gets my Reaper?” spat Wimmer.

  “I’m suspended,” Shia repeated, both her body and voice box exhausted from answering questions. “Did you expect me to get everything you needed in three nights?”

  “You want what I got to give?” Wimmer flatly stated. “You get me what I need.”

  “We got our ride-along killed!”

  “Is that something I can use?”

  “
I don’t know.”

  “Then?”

  “I’m on suspension pending investigation!” Shia repeated again. “My career might be over and out. I’ll be lucky to get shuffled back into jail rotation.”

  “I don’t care what you have to do and who you have do it to,” demanded Wimmer. “I’m your lone ticket to Federal Employment Land.”

  Shia didn’t squeeze in a shower or change her clothes. She didn’t even elevator upstairs to attend to her old man. She U-turned and pointed her Optima back in the direction of Compton. All while Wimmer’s tin voice pinged behind the membranes of her eardrums.

  “You’re a smart girl,” Wimmer seethed. “Figure it out. Solve the problem. Get me what you promised.”

  Shia didn’t precisely recall promising Steve Wimminger anything other than to give her utmost effort. Had she done as much? Obviously, not in his DOJ opinion. With downtown Los Angeles prominently engorging her windshield before she transitioned to the 110 South, she was speed dialing the watch desk at the Compton Station.

  “Watch desk,” answered the female voice. “Sergeant Menendez.”

  “Hello, sergeant,” said Shia. “This is Deputy Saint George. I was following up—”

  “Deputy!” interrupted the excited desk sergeant, her honey-smoked voice so welcoming. “Helluva night you had. You holdin’ it together?”

  “I’m fine,” said Shia. “Wouldn’t have made it without my T.O.”

  “Lucky you had Lucky,” grinned Menendez over the phone. “See what I did there?”

  “Speaking of Deputy Dey,” continued Shia, “were there any messages left on our call box? Just following up before I clear the shift log.”

  “Unit 780,” Menendez repeated from memory. “Your black-and-white is still in the back lot. On the tow truck. Nobody’s punching in without first giving it their own once-over, you know? There go we all but for the Grace of God.”