"Get him out of here," she replied. "Go back to Jose's."
"What's going on? Jody wouldn't use drugs. He's trying to get everybody off drugs."
"I think I know what happened. I need to do some damage control. Just do what I say. I'll be there as soon as I can." She turned and left the deck.
Shane got his hands under Jody and half dragged, half carried him off the patio. He laid him down on the damp grass at the side of the villa. Jody was groaning. Inside the party, the Majesties ended "Begin the Beguine," finishing up with a corny drum riff. Jody rolled over and vomited on the grass.
"Always a music critic," Shane mumbled.
"Get me outta here, Salsa," Jody moaned. "I feel like shit."
A few minutes later Shane found Sawdust and Victory on the far side of the room, pounding down scotches like construction workers at a neighborhood bar.
"Let's go. Jody's outside," Shane said, and left without waiting for them to reply.
They found Jody on the grass where Shane had left him, but now he was unconscious, snoring loudly.
"What'd you do to him?" Lester growled.
"I didn't do anything to him. Somebody spiked his drink. It was weird… Some kinda mood-altering substance, maybe GHB. He went nuts… Blew the whole deal."
"What?" Sawdust said, then looked at Shane suspiciously. "Who would drug him? Everybody's in this for the money. These people need us to move their product. You did this to him!"
"It wasn't me," Shane said. "You want a guess? I think we got some competitors inside All-American who don't want this deal to happen."
Victory stood leaning on his crutch while Sawdust ran to the parking lot above and retrieved the motor home. When he pulled up, Shane and Victory dragged Jody inside. They drove back to Jose Mondragon's villa to wait for Lisa St. Marie.
But she was already there, standing with Tremaine Lane out by the pool.
Chapter 27
THE REBOUND
WHILE THE REST of the Vikings put Jody into bed, Shane talked it over with Lisa.
"I think I can still save this," she told him. "I know what happened. At least I'm pretty sure I know. I think I can convince Lou… But we need to…" She stopped because Victory Smith had just come out of the house and was hopping around the deep end of the pool, over to where they were standing. He leaned in on his crutch, glaring.
One by one, the rest of the Vikings came out and formed a circle around them.
"You ain't supposed to talk to her. Jody does the deals," Victory growled.
"Somebody, and I won't mention who, dropped hydroxyl methylphenidate into Jody's drink," Lisa said.
"I'm not a fucking druggist. Talk English, lady," Smith said.
"MDMA-two, a form of juiced up Ecstasy. It's a big-time depressant, causes irrational behavior," Shane replied, and Lisa nodded. Apparently, Victory had been so busy at SWAT, kicking doors and doing kneecaps, he missed out on his drug tour in Vice.
"We don't have any time," she continued. "If you guys still want this deal, I have a chance to save it. Mr. Petrovitch is leaving on his private jet in two hours. I either put this back together by then, or it's dead." She was cool and in control. Her jade-green eyes seemed to twinkle with excitement. Or was it amusement? Shane couldn't shake the feeling that she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
"I need to cut a deal now," she pressed.
"If Jody's X-ing, he won't be up to anything for hours, maybe a day," Tremaine said.
"I need to take Lou a deal tonight, in the next hour. I know I can square things with Papa Joe. It's Petrovitch we need to capture. Jody threatened him, and frankly, Lou doesn't like being threatened. I may have a way to straighten that out, but I want one of you to cut the deal with me now. I need to bring him an offer."
"One of us?" Sawdust asked.
"Him," Lisa said, pointing at Shane.
"Fuck him. He not even scheduled t'live till Friday" Victory growled.
"It's him or nobody… And, whatever he and I work out, you've gotta make Jody stick to it."
"Maybe it was you, spiked Jody's drink so you could front up and kick Scully's ass on this deal," Tremaine Lane said lazily from a chair a few feet away, his feet propped up on a glass-topped table.
"Okay… Have it your way. See ya around," Lisa said, then started to walk to the far end of the pool. They all watched, mesmerized by the hip action. Shane guessed she was probably not doing it intentionally. She'd learned that walk in high school when she first realized it turned every guy's brain to mush.
"Hang on a minute," Lester drawled. "We'll do it your way."
Lisa stopped and turned theatrically to look at them.
"What if Jody don't like the deal once he comes to?" Victory asked.
"Hey, boys," she said softly. "The big money is in the smuggle. You guys are gonna make your percentage off that. You wanna blow this over whether it ends up being two seventy-five a case or three hundred?"
They stood glaring at her, trying to decide what to do.
"What's it gonna be? Once Mr. Petrovitch's plane takes off, this is over. He won't revisit it. We're out of time."
Victory Smith leaned forward on his crutch and whispered softly to Shane, so nobody else could hear: "Okay, Party Boy, go ahead. But if you get shorted by this bitch, the balance comes out of your end."
"Y'mean I'm gonna be around for the payoff? I thought I wasn't gonna make it till Friday."
"Keep yer hands off her. I'm the one's gonna be doing her. You fuck her, you're dead."
"Is this on or off?" Lisa asked from the far side of the pool, where she waited impatiently, hands on her hips.
"Go on, gaffle with the bitch," Tremaine said softly, his deep ghetto voice rumbling.
Lisa crossed back, took Shane by the hand, and led him around the side of the house to the front drive, where her car was parked. It was a white Mercedes convertible with the top down. She slid behind the wheel and got it started.
"Where're we going?" Shane asked, still standing by the passenger door.
"I'm not gonna try and cut a deal here, with all these testosterone cases leaning on me. We'll find a nice quiet spot. Get in."
Just before sliding in beside her, Shane looked up and caught Victory glaring out of the living-room window. Shane shot him a wide grin, then grabbed his crotch. Smith was still there as they pulled away from the house.
"It's Arnold Zook," she said. "I can't prove it, of course, but I'm pretty sure he's the one who spiked Jody's drink."
"Who? You mean the little round short one who looks like he should be stacking cans at Ralph's?"
They were parked halfway between La Quinta and Rancho Mirage, off Bob Hope Drive, in a small, sculpted park. Up-lit date palms stood over them, swaying in the breeze like giant eunuchs waving fans.
"He was the product executive who was working with Leon Fine. When Leon disappeared, Jody preferred working with me. Arnold lost the account, and he didn't take it too well."
"What's the difference? Don't both of you work for All-American Tobacco?"
"Our individual financial arrangements are complex, but they're tied to product placement. If Jody made an ass of himself and pissed off Mr. Petrovitch, Arnold Zook wouldn't lose any sleep over it."
"Okay, so how do you get Petrovitch to come around?"
"Leave that part to me," she allowed. "I just need to know what we're talking about."
"And, like Tremaine said, you picked me because I looked like the biggest moron."
"I picked you because you're the only one who isn't fucked up on drugs. You can still think. I swear… Jody's let these guys get completely out of control. This is my first and last arrangement with him."
"Okay, let's hear your offer."
"I can't cut a deal on product price. Mr.
Petrovitch won't go for it. Our parallel market is in place and has been operating along set guidelines for a very long time."
"Over twenty-five years, I hear."
"Yeah, maybe. And if word gets
out that I cut you a discount price on product, it's gonna haunt me on every other deal I make in the world."
"So, you smuggle tobacco and launder drug cash in places other than just Colombia?"
"I don't like to use words like 'smuggle' and 'launder.' I'm a tobacco-company account executive, negotiating a deal with you to supply the Blackstone duty-free zone in Aruba with cigarettes to be sold there. Period. End of discussion."
"Lisa… You're laundering Colombian drug money for the Cali cartel."
"I'm not laundering anything."
"The Vikings set this deal up with a Cali cartel drug dealer in L. A., then Jody cut a deal with Papa Joe at Blackstone. They brought All-American in to supply the cigarettes, which get shipped to Aruba, paid for with drug cash, and smuggled back into Colombia, where they're sold by the Cali cartel, who then gets its money back. If that's not a laundry, then I'm Pippi Longstocking."
"Where Jody or anybody else gets the money to buy our product is their business, not mine. Listen, Shane, I'm cutting you a lot of slack here. Don't make this impossible."
"Okay, so you won't negotiate on the cigarettes. How 'bout the shipping and insurance and warehousing-all that other stuff you were talking about?"
"I'll give you ten cents per case off the shipping, and forty cents on the insurance-"
Shane put up a hand and interrupted her, "Slow down. I don't even know what we're talking about."
"We're talking about all the ancillary expenses."
"Hell, I don't even know what's good or bad… Or what competitive bids on those services might be. I'm negotiating blind here."
"So, then, how are we gonna make a deal?"
"You have rate cards on all this shit? For your legitimate deals? The shipping and insurance and warehousing?"
"Yeah."
"Okay… Fifty percent off on the entire package, per your rate card."
"What?"
"I want those services at cost."
"I heard you, but that's ridiculous. I'd be cutting my price by over…" She reached into her purse and pulled out a calculator and began poking at the keys, her lacquered nails clicking as she punched in numbers. Shane watched her while she worked, her features shimmering in the moving lights from the swaying date palms. After a minute, she looked over at him. "Thirty percent. Best I can do."
"Fifty percent, Lisa. Don't fuck with me on this. If I cut too bad a deal, Jody's just gonna tank it. You can sell this to Mr. Puffenguts, I know you can."
"Petrovitch," she said, smiling.
"You guys will be running your shipping, insurance, and warehousing at no profit, but you're still getting a full three hundred dollars a case on the smokes; like Jody said, it is a huge shipment."
She looked down at the computer in her hand. "Fifty percent off." She punched in a few more figures. "That comes to a little more than seventeen dollars a case."
"Okay, that's the deal then. Yes or no."
She tapped her thumb on the Texas Instruments computer, which had a twelve-digit LD screen instead of the normal ten.
"Okay. But if I can't sell this to Lou, I'll need you nearby. I want you to wait for me in a place where I can get back to you without having the rest of Jody's animals contributing their opinions."
"Where?"
"AAT rented me a separate villa at the Ritz-Carlton, down by the tennis courts. How 'bout there? Lou should still be at the hotel, packing. That way, if we need to adjust anything, you'll be handy."
"Okay."
She put the car in gear. They pulled out from under the date palms, shot down Bob Hope Drive, and turned right again on Highway 111. Lisa St. Marie was holding her head erect, her shoulders straight. She seemed lost in thought while she drove: intense, hard and beautiful, no flirtatious nonsense now. She had turned back into a very busy executive on an important lung-destroying mission.
Shane wondered if she was planning to blow the Prussian general to get the deal done.
Chapter 28
CANDY KISS
HER ROOM WAS full of shiny masonry, Italian terra-cotta, and Spanish tile. Expensively framed but marginal abstract art hung on the walls. Like everything else in the desert, this junior-executive suite had a pastel-peach color scheme. Except Lisa's suite was without the magnificent views of the valley or the golf course. Shane could see a lit tennis court out the main window and hear the steady thunk-thonk of a singles match, mixed with energetic grunts and squeaking shoes. The match was obscured behind a green screen that hung on the chain-link fence a few yards from the window. The shadows danced and lunged on the colorful canvas like ghostly memories.
Lisa was still with Petrovitch. Shane looked at her telephone and again considered making a call to Filosiani. But he didn't want the LAPD number to show up on her bill, so he decided to wait. Instead, he took the opportunity to get to know her a little better.
He started his search where most cops do- in the bathroom, where you often learned personal secrets. Lisa's bathroom was no exception. She had the standard beauty aids: eye shadow, makeup brushes, and Vaseline; two round metal hairbrushes, each tangled with honey-ash strands. He pulled several loose. There were no dark roots-a natural blonde. Lipsticks by Langome: Iced Amethyst and Bronze Fire. No eyewash or contact-lens case, so it seemed the jade-green color came direct from the factory. Then he found two small, brown plastic compacts stuck way down in the webbing of her cosmetic travel case. The powder inside was not from Revlon, but Colombia. Fine and white, it dusted the mirror. Shane ran a wet index finger across the stuff and tasted it…
Bingo. El Diablo!
Lisa St. Marie kept that high-strung motor of hers redlined with toots of Inca whizbang.
Shane closed the compact and put it back where he found it.
Welly he mused darkly, there are worse things than snorting coke… You could always punch a round through your girlfriend's heart.
He moved through the rest of the place.
The closet contained mostly expensive designer stuff. She either did very well at All-American Tobacco or General Puffenguts bought her a lot of high-priced collectibles. The shoes were strictly from the Imelda Marcos shelf: Prada, Charles David, Manolo Blahnik.
Her jewel case was locked inside the flimsy key-locked room safe, which Shane opened easily with his picks. The case was just a small leather box, but with impressive contents. Shane wasn't much at appraising jewelry and wished he had Murray Steinberg there to scan them with his loupe, but they looked authentic-expensive settings glittering with designer elegance.
He closed the safe and kept snooping.
The refrigerator was where he found Lisa's moonwalking kit. The heavy artillery was tucked in the freezer compartment behind the ice trays: amphetamines, methamphetamines, and, oh yeah… Some MDMA2. So maybe Tremaine had called that one right. Maybe Lisa had sabotaged the deal with Jody so she could knock down the price with Shane.
There were also some tabs of something that Shane thought looked like LSD, making them the only ingestibles. This was gyro-hydro, but there was no needle. Lisa didn't do her cooking in a spoon. She didn't violate that perfect alabaster skin with track marks. Everything in here but the acid and the Ecstasy went up her nose.
He closed the refrigerator and wandered back into the living room. The tennis game had finished, so Shane slumped into the big, overstuffed club chair by the window. He was bone-tired, and without planning to drift off, he was suddenly somewhere else… Asleep, but maybe not; dreaming, but it felt terribly real… Like he had passed into some other dimension intact, summoned there for an audience and a scolding.
She was dressed in her sergeant's uniform, the one she had worn at the Medal of Valor ceremonies, and she was still holding the medal in its beautiful leather case.
"Shane, we can never make this work- You know that, of course. " She was scowling at him, but there was also disappointment.
"Why, Alexa… Why can't we?"
"Because there's darkness in you. Whether it's because you were abandone
d by your mother… Left at that hospital as an infant, or because police work made you cynical isn't important anymore. Darkness is darkness, no matter where it comes from. And it's been there as long as I've known you. Even when we laughed, it was there, hiding behind your smile, frightening me."
"Alexa… No… Please… I can change."
"It never would've worked. Never. We were kidding ourselves."
"No… No, it could have, because I loved you. I still love you."
"God decides these things," she said sharply, standing in the beautiful pulpit now, preaching down at him. He remembered that pulpit. As a child, he had gone to the Episcopal church each Sunday with the Deans, looked up in wonder at its carved perfection, studied it while sermons droned. It was ornate and encrusted with symbols. Angels with their wings outstretched held the corners of the desk aloft. On its polished surface rested the powerful book of words. A scroll was carved on the front face of the pulpit. He'd wondered what important truths were on that document, what overpowering wisdom. He went up and tried to read the scroll, but the letters were only tiny scratches in the polished wood; like so much of his early life, only there for effect. "God makes these choices for us," Alexa continued. "You went your way, I went mine. "
"No…"
"It's done. The deal is closed."
"No, Alexa, not yet."
Suddenly, somebody touched his shoulder.
He opened his eyes. It was Lisa. She was standing over him, dressed in a black linen coat.
"I said, The deal is done, and who the fuck is Alexa?"
"Hi," he said, still troubled by the nature and content of the dream. "Nobody… Old friend. She's dead."
"Mr. Puffenguts will do the deal as negotiated." Lisa smiled. "Papa Joe is writing the contract over in Lou's suite. If you sign it before you leave, the ball is back in play." "Oh…"
"And now for the celebration." She held out a bottle of champagne she'd been hiding behind her back.
"I don't like champagne much." His head was clogged; the heavy sleep and troubling dream lingered.
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