Three shirt deal ss-7

by Stephen Cannell

  "Then he's still in a position to argue against Tru getting a new trial," I said.

  "We gotta go over his head, talk to Chase Beal, the district attorney," she answered. "But first I need to set up a meeting with Tito, the Chief, and Jane Sasso. I need to get Morales on the record before I go to the D. A. Jane needs to set up a new investigation into Olivia Hickman's murder for us to have any chance of getting that writ. That skinny bitch better come through this time."

  I had my doubts. It had been a long, torturous journey. If Wade Wyatt got out of the country and Church and the VSLs kept quiet, Tito was in the clear and Tru Hickman was probably going to be stuck doing life in Corcoran. Not a very rewarding outcome to a very stressful three weeks.

  As we talked, Alexa's cell phone rang. "Just a minute," she said and looked over at me. "I've got to take this outside. Be right back."

  When she was gone I was distressed that there were still things she felt she couldn't say in my presence. But then the door opened, and I knew why she'd left.

  Secada stood there looking a little less vivid and a lot thinner. She walked into the room, then sat on the edge of my bed.

  "Are you always this reckless?" she asked.

  I wasn't sure how to answer, so I said nothing. Finally she broke the silence. "We didn't get enough, did we? All we've got is a kidnapping and attempted murder of a police officer. That could put Church and Wade Wyatt away for thirty years, but it doesn't get Tru out of Corcoran."

  "Let's see what happens at Alexa's meeting tomorrow. I'll see you there."

  "I've been ordered by Jane not to attend. She wants to represent PSB without my interference." Secada shook her head sadly "If Morales doesn't accept our new writ, then it looks as if all of this was for nothing."

  Chapter 56

  The meeting took place in Alexa's office at ten the following morning. The room was too small for the crowd we'd drawn. I had checked myself out of the hospital and was feeling queasy and weak. I wore my clothes carefully over two pounds of ointment, burn bandages, and bruises. Jane Sasso showed up looking pretzel thin and severe in one of her trademark Armani suits. She was so brittle, I thought if she moved too quickly she might snap. Her hard, lined face and pixie haircut made her look like a pissed-off Disney character. She sat in the big upholstered chair in the corner. Jeb Calloway was Mighty Mouse in a black suit. I'd never seen him wear a tie, except at police funerals, but today he had on a paisley monster with a big Windsor knot. Also in attendance was Tru Hickman's attorney, Vonnie Hope, who was easy to overlook in this room full of A-type personalities.

  The Chief finally breezed into the office, all five foot seven of him bouncing on oxblood loafers, his bald head shiny, his pink face the color of a baked ham. Tito Morales trailed him into the room. The election was only a week away and Morales was still twenty points ahead in the polls and doing daily interviews, so he was wearing a media-friendly red tie.

  Tony said, "We're packed like sardines in here." Without another word, he moved the meeting into the large sixth-floor conference room.

  Once we were all settled in swivel chairs with a view of Union Station out the floor-to-ceiling window, Tony put the ball in play.

  "I've read the case facts, Alexa," he said. "It appears Lieutenant Devine blew the Hickman investigation and that we may have the wrong guy in the pokey."

  "I don't agree," Tito Morales said. He looked cool and in control. He knew we'd been unable to tie him directly to anything, and he knew that with Devine dead and Church and his crew dummied up, his only problem now was Wade Wyatt. From his overconfident attitude, it seemed reasonable to conclude that he'd already cut some kind of a deal with Aubrey. He knew Wade was not going to fall out of the sky and bitch up his victory party at City Hall. Morales had a duplicate case folder in his hand. "There's a lot of what-if speculation in here," he continued. "Unless you can produce Wade Wyatt to testify, everything you've got about Lieutenant Devine's investigation is subject to a good deal of dispute. Since he's dead and can't give his side of the story, the way I read it, you don't have anything but a theory here."

  "Hey, Tito, you pled this guy on bad evidence," I challenged. "That bloody shoe print you never ran doesn't match the sole pattern on Tru's boots. Someone else was in that kitchen. I'm saying it was Mike Church."

  "Then you'll want to produce Mr. Church's boots and get a pattern match, won't you?"

  "It was a year ago. After all this, they're gone."

  "So that's nothing, then." He closed the case folder for emphasis.

  "Wade Wyatt and Mike Church are much better suspects," I said angrily.

  "Except, I have a confession from Tru Hickman saying he did it, and I also have extensive case material supporting that plea bargain. So I'm against a new writ. If the Prosecutor's office keeps going backward, if we keep reopening old cases just to satisfy a few evidentiary nitpicks, we'll never get through even one month's calendar."

  "Fuck the calendar," I said.

  Alexa took my hand and squeezed it, telling me to get hold of myself. It was a gesture of caution.

  "How about you, Jane?" Alexa asked. "It's your bad due-process investigation. What are you gonna do?"

  Sasso looked at Alexa, then at Tony Filosiani, whose face showed very little. The Chief liked his division commanders to make their own decisions.

  "We're reopening the Olivia Hickman murder investigation," she said. "And we're putting a homicide number on Ron Torgason's death as well."

  "Good decision," Vonnie Hope said. "Because if you hadn't, that was going to be an L. A. Times front page story tomorrow."

  "Don't threaten me, little girl," Sasso said, crisply.

  "Not a threat-a promise. I'm still working this murder. After it's adjudicated, and it will be…" She glared at Tito before going on. "After that, I'm cutting loose from the P. D.'s office, so it won't do you much good to threaten my job, Tito."

  "You can reopen your investigation, but that doesn't mean you're going to get a writ," Morales said. "You still have to convince a judge and I'm gonna be there to make sure that doesn't happen."

  As we walked out of the conference room, Jane Sasso, Tony, and Alexa huddled up in the hall. I watched Tito get into the elevator, elegant and self-assured.

  Alexa and I left Parker Center and stood outside in the late morning sunshine. It was a hot day, and I could immediately feel the heat on my sun-sensitive, burned skin.

  "I'm gonna go over to the D. A.'s office," Alexa said. "See if I can make a deal with Chase Beal. You set up your appointment with Aubrey Wyatt yet?"

  "I'm just gonna drop in on him. I don't want him to have any time to get ready."

  "Manslaughter. That's what you want the D. A. to offer?" she asked.

  "You get Chase Beal to offer me that kick down and I'll see if I can get Aubrey Wyatt to cough up that little hairball he calls a son."

  Chapter 57

  The law firm of Wyatt, Clark, and Cummings was on the top three floors of a forty-story Century City Office building. The firm did legal work for movie stars and L. A. power brokers, and was heavily involved in political fund-raising, which earned them a lot of expensive lobby art as well as plenty of heft in state politics. I wanted to drop my bomb from altitude. Didn't want Aubrey Wyatt to hear it whistling down until it hit. Surprise is everything in this kind of negotiation.

  "LAPD," I told the young Harvard grad in pinstripes working the huge granite desk across from the elevator, showing him my badge. "It's regarding Wade Wyatt and a homicide investigation I'm conducting."

  "You don't have an appointment," the man said. "Mr. Wyatt doesn't see people without an appointment." Then he paused and added, "Ever!"

  "Tell Mr. Wyatt that I'm here with his son's last chance to avoid life in prison. He sees me right now or he loses it."

  "You sure you want that to be the message?"

  "That's the message."

  The young man leaned forward and started to pick up the phone, but then thought better of it. He g
ot up and disappeared through a door behind the desk. A few minutes after he left, my cell rang. It was Alexa.

  "You get Wade back from wherever he is and if he comes through with everything we want, the D. A. will offer Man One, but he's not happy about it. Morales is his deputy D. A. and a mayoral front-runner. Chase told me this is not the way to make friends in California politics."

  "I'll do my best to deliver," I said.

  I closed my cell phone as the Harvard grad reappeared and said, "Follow me, please."

  He led me down a beautifully decorated hallway hung with museum-quality paintings. I was ushered into an expansive, if somewhat sterile, conference room dominated by a long red mahogany table surrounded by twenty oxblood leather chairs, which sat on a sea of cut-pile gray carpeting.

  I was drawn by the view to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, which overlooked the city. To the west was Santa Monica Bay and even though the ocean was five miles away, I could make out the white sails on a flock of boats crisscrossing the choppy water. It was a rare, smogless, windswept day. Crisp and clean, full of sharp edges and bright colors. I was still at the window when the door behind me opened.

  I turned to see a man over six feet tall standing at the far end of the room regarding me with puzzled exasperation. In person, Aubrey Wyatt was an even more commanding presence than in the pictures I'd seen. He emanated power-from his silver-white hair and aquiline profile, right down to his aura of mild condescending disdain. His foreboding demeanor told me that this wouldn't be easy.

  "Interesting message," he said.

  "Do you know who I am?"

  "Detective Scully," he said, matter-of-factly. "My son told me about you. He says you're a hothead, and not very smart."

  I didn' t respond. It was a close enough description.

  "My son has a superior mind. He's been at the top of every scale society uses to measure aptitude and ability. I've raised him for greatness and I do not intend for a bunch of trumped-up allegations made by semiliterate immigrants and angry cops to change that."

  "That may be out of your control." I handed Aubrey Wyatt my carefully annotated case folder.

  He took it without comment, then sat in the nearest chair and began to read. After he was halfway through the first page, he got up, grabbed a yellow legal pad from a side table and then sat back down and began making notes with a five-hundred-dollar Mont Blanc pen. After almost thirty minutes he closed the file and looked up.

  "Where's your son?"

  "I haven't the faintest."

  "He can't run from this. The D. A. can file murder charges, try him in absentia."

  "You can attempt that. But it doesn't mean you'll get an indictment, let alone a conviction." He tapped the file with his gold pen. "Most, if not all of this is weak and circumstantial. You don't have one witness to the Olivia Hickman murder who can put my son anywhere in the vicinity of the crime. This Ron Torgason thing is pure speculation. He could have hit his head and drowned in his pool as the coroner's report states. Same with Juan Iglesia. My guess is this Mexican gangster, Church, and his buddies are probably not going to talk. That means you've got very little here save an interesting theory."

  "I have one pretty good witness who will change everything."

  "Really?" Aubrey Wyatt sat very still and studied me carefully. "The way I read your summary, Lieutenant Devine is dead. Without Church or this pack of VSL gangsters turning state's evidence, there's nobody else."

  "You're wrong. I have one witness who can put Mike Church away."

  "And who would that be?"

  "Me." I let that sink in for a minute then said, "Church kidnapped and then tried to kill me on Colossus at Magic Mountain last night. I'm the only victim in this whole mess who managed to survive. My testimony will put him away for life. That's probably forty years, or until he dies."

  "Fine. Do that then. I don't see how that affects Wade."

  "Here's how it affects him. I'm really not all that interested in what happens to Mike Church. Yeah, he's a violent gangster who needs to get stuffed, but I figure once he's gone, another vato with a hard-on will just step up to take his place. I'm only interested in one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "I want to get Tru Hickman out of prison because he's innocent. In order to do that, I need somebody who can help me catch the real killers of Olivia Hickman. Those killers are your son, Wade, and Mike Church."

  "You can't prove that."

  "I think I can."

  "How, pray tell?"

  Pray tell? Man, don't you just love it?

  "I've just been authorized by the D. A., Chase Beal, to cut the following deal with Mike Church: If Church turns State's evidence against your son on Hickman and Torgason, the D. A. will let him cop to Man One on both killings. He will recommend to the court that the two manslaughter sentences run concurrently. Instead of life, he gets twelve years. In return for his cooperation, I will refuse to testify against Church on my kidnapping and attempted homicide, which is a slam-dunk life without possibility of parole. Without my testimony, that kidnapping/attempted murder case goes away. It represents a net gain of at least twenty-two years for

  Mr. Church. Whatta you bet he takes it and sells us your ratbag kid?"

  I knew I'd drawn blood because he shifted a little in his chair. It was the first sign that he acknowledged any jeopardy for his son.

  We stood in that magnificent room trading hard stares until he broke the silence.

  "Since you're standing in my office, I assume you have something more you want to impart."

  "Right now this is a jump ball. The D. A. will also offer the same kick down to your son. You get Wade to come home from wherever you have him stashed. If he steps up and puts this multiple homicide on Church, who I think did the actual work, then we'll let Wade be the one to cop to manslaughter and take the twelve years. Mike Church can do life without."

  "My son is safe where he is."

  "I don't think he's safe anywhere. He's an arrogant, self-involved little prick who's bound to make an arrogant, self-involved mistake. If I get him convicted for Murder One in absentia, warrants will go out for his arrest. He's not gonna listen to you when you tell him to stay put. He'll get itchy and end up going to some yacht race in Spain. Once he's out of whatever protected nonextradition zone you've got him stashed in, I'll be there with a warrant. But by then, Church will have already made the plea deal and your son will have to do the whole lifelong stretch."

  "I need time to evaluate this."

  "You've got until six tonight. If you're as smart as your reputation, you'll get your boy to grab it. If he does, he'll be out in time for his fortieth birthday with half a life still to live. But if you take the deal, there can be no holding back. Wade needs to offer up the whole thing. The rigged beer contest, how they scammed Homeland Security. He has to cop to both Juan Iglesia and Olivia

  Hickman and, most important, he needs to give me Tito Morales. Only then does he get the reduced charges."

  I watched Aubrey Wyatt process all of this, looking for a way out. I could see from his frown that he really appreciated the box I had him in.

  I picked up my case folder and left him sitting there.

  Chapter 58

  The blue and white Gulfstream Five with Wade Wyatt aboard touched down from Havana, Cuba, at ten a. M. the following Wednesday. The jet's two Rolls-Royce engines screamed in retro as it came to a stop at the end of Van Nuys Field, turned, and headed back toward us. Alexa, Secada, Jeb Calloway, Yvonne Hope, two uniformed officers, and I stood inside the private Jet Center watching through the window. Aubrey Wyatt, flanked by two stern, briefcase-wielding assistants also waited a short distance from us. Except for initial introductions, nothing was said between our two groups during the twenty-minute wait.

  The private business jet taxied up to the terminal and the door descended. Then Wade appeared in the hatch. For the first time since I'd busted him three weeks ago in his father's million-dollar red Ferrari, he looke
d frightened and small. He walked down the stairs as everyone surged out onto the tarmac to intercept him at the foot of the boarding ladder.

  "You take him into custody," I told Secada. "Your case."

  She stepped forward and began to read the Miranda in a firm voice. As she continued reading from the card a tight grimace passed over Wade's handsome face. Murderers, I've come to realize, manifest themselves in two basic categories. You have the trigger-pulling, I'll-do-it-myself variety, and then, there are the Wade Wyatts of the world, the too-smart-to-get-blood-on-me guys. Planners. On a basic honesty level, I have to admit I prefer the former, but generally, the legal system cuts its deals with the latter. Hitters like Mike Church are hard to sympathize with and are perceived to be more dangerous.

  "Come with us," Secada instructed Wade as the two uniforms finished handcuffing him and began to lead him away.

  "Dad? Do I have to?" Fear of having to take showers with muscle-bound guys named Jesus and Jamal darkened his prep-school features.

  "We'll post bail. You go with them," Aubrey told him.

  "There'll be no bail hearing until my client is out of prison," Vonnie Hope said. "You made a deal for manslaughter, but until we take his statement and the D. A. signs off on it and files the lesser charge, your son is still under arrest for Murder One, a nonbondable offense."

  "What possible good does it do to lock up Wade?" Aubrey said. "He came back from Cuba on his own. He's not going anywhere."

  "Maybe if you hadn't always stepped in to fix his problems he wouldn't be in this mess right now," Secada advised.

  Wade was led toward the terminal, but he saw me standing with the others and stopped.

  "You did this to me," he said petulantly.