Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  “I never forget nobody, baby,” Michelle said. “Is why I am so successful.”

  “But how’d you know he was an agent?” Jack said.

  “’Cause Andreen told me he was. Said he had him in his pocket. Him and his partner did favors for the boys so he could get a nice fat retirement fund.”

  Jack said nothing. The mere thought of it . . . Zac Blakely, his mentor and friend . . . it made him sick. A bitter taste came up in the back of his throat, like three-day-old coffee.

  “Hey, Jackie, you still with me?”

  “Yeah, Michelle . . . Yeah, I’m here.”

  Jack was no longer driving. He’d pulled his car over in front of the Apple Pan on Pico, and was staring at the green letters in a daze. They looked too bright, as if they were exploding on him.

  “Thanks, Michelle,” he said. “I’m going to look into this.”

  “Sorry to tell you about your friend, Jackie,” she said. “You should know better than to trust peoples.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “But how the fuck do you live if you can’t?”

  There was a long silence from Michelle Wu, and then she gave an odd little laugh.

  “You don’t count on them, Jackie, you just learn to be amused by them. If they amuse you, then they are good company. That is my number-one belief. Keep Miss Michelle laughing, and every thing will be fine. Trust is for the dead. They got nothing to lose.”

  “I’ll try and remember that,” Jack said.

  “Yeah,” Michelle said. “Lighten up, Jackie. People ain’t so bad. Long as you keep real low expectations. Love you, baby.”

  Then she hung up the phone.

  Jack sat there staring at the green neon sign, his head aching and spinning. Are Zac Blakely and Ron Hughes bad cops? He would have bet his life against it. Jack felt dizzy, lost. He had known Blakely for . . . twenty years. It couldn’t be true.

  And yet more than one cop had wanted to pad his savings when he was staring at retirement and living on a fixed income.

  But not Zac . . . not his mentor. He knew the guy like a brother. It just couldn’t be . . .

  The only problem was that Michelle Wu was rarely wrong about people. If she said she met him there, hanging with the Valley Boys, then it was true. But maybe there was more to the story than she knew. Blakely could have been down there setting them up for a bust . . . Maybe Jay Richards was just his cover name.

  And maybe not, too. Now he had to make an audit of all of Blakely’s computers. That would be easy . . . unless his wife had already cleaned them. And did she know, too? No, probably not. Zac was always secretive and would have wanted his crimes known by as few people as possible.

  Jack turned the engine back on, feeling the bitter taste in his mouth and a pain in his temples. Forrester was right: the two of them were crooked. But where did that leave Forrester himself? Was he involved? Had he killed them for double-crossing him?

  Jack felt like a man sinking into quicksand.

  Then he remembered. Steinbach had once mentioned Timmy Andreen, too.

  Was it possible that Steinbach and Andreen were in business?

  How did Blakely and Hughes fit in with them?

  And the bearded man who had just tried to run him down?

  Did he come from Steinbach, Andreen, Forrester?

  Or somewhere else? Fuck it, he was wasted. He had to get home.

  Get home, be with Kevin . . . Jesus, he’d forgotten. Julie wasn’t there . . . He’d left Kevin alone. It wasn’t the first time, but now, with all of Kevin’s troubles, he should have skipped Charlie’s and gotten back there sooner.

  He gunned the motor and raced home, his mind reeling from the possibilities in the case and his conscience bothering him for being a neglectful dad.

  22

  IN THE MORNING, Jack went into his office and found an e-mail from Maria Vasquez in Peru.

  Dear Jack,

  Things here are better than I ever had hoped for. My cousin, Jorge, is an excellent chef and we’re opening a great new restaurant in town. Think we may feature both local food and some of the great California food I learned to love and miss. The town has some money now and needs at least one good place to dine, so I think we’re going to be it! Miss you and hope you’re doing well. Write me and don’t worry. I’ve got all the “security” I need.

  Love,

  Maria Vasquez

  Jack felt a huge sigh of relief. In a world of seemingly endless fear and terror, something was going right.

  He smiled, wrote her a short note back, and sent it.

  As he did, he wondered if he’d ever see her again. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking such things, but there was something so seductive about her . . .

  Maybe someday he’d get down there to see her . . .

  No, that was the wrong way to think. His dogging days were over, Jack told himself. Time to grow up for real.

  Maybe Julie’s insecurity was at least partially based on the mixed signals Jack was sending. You didn’t really have to cheat to make your partner feel that you might. Maybe Jack looked at girls on the street for just a few seconds too long. Or maybe he mentioned women’s looks too often. That was probably okay in a relationship which had stood the test of time, but he and Julie had just gotten started, and maybe he had to think of her feelings more often.

  He swore to himself he would. He would call her, try to win her back. Tonight, if he had time.

  Meantime, he was really happy for Maria, though that wasn’t her real name. And, in fact, maybe that was part of her appeal. She and he were alike in that they played roles so often as undercover cops they sometimes didn’t even know who they themselves were.

  Only that they were both on the same side.

  Good guys. That was one thing he was sure of.

  As the rain came down on Hollywood Boulevard, Jack and Tommy Wilson from Homeland Security waited in Jack’s unmarked car outside Musso & Frank’s Grill. Oscar was around the other side of the venerable old restaurant, keeping watch on Musso’s back parking lot.

  Jack looked at two teenage girls who were wearing blouses that revealed bare midriffs as they walked by, eyeing potential clients on the street. He felt a desire to pull them into the car before something happened to them, but the blonde was hot . . . and he suddenly imagined her in quite a different way. On her knees, naked, in front of him. He shook his head, as if the physical action could shake the temptation out of his brain and heart. That was the trouble with working in Hollywood. Temptation was everywhere. He had friends who worked for the Bureau in Kansas City. When they came out to L.A. to visit Jack, they couldn’t believe the women. Man, you could knock them for their lack of brains, but the sheer carnality of the women in Hollywood was overwhelming. That thought led Jack to think of Zac Blakely . . . the idea of him turning, taking money . . . fuck, the thought made Jack’s belly tense in pain. He grunted, let out a deep breath. He hadn’t told Oscar about it yet. He knew it would make him sick.

  From the shotgun seat, Tommy Wilson looked at his watch and snarled at Jack.

  “It’s fucking four thirty! I told you Steinbach isn’t your guy.”

  “Let me check with Oscar.”

  He punched 1 on his cell phone, and Oscar picked up on the first ring.

  “Any sign of Nicki or the Kraut?”

  “Nada. You want to give ’em a couple more minutes?”

  “Yeah, all right,” Jack said.

  He clicked off and turned to Wilson.

  “Few more . . .”

  Wilson laughed, shook his head.

  “You’re a funny guy,” he said to Jack. “You got a hard-on for this Steinbach guy. He’s not your boy. ’Sides, how would he get here when I got men watching him night and day?”

  “He might shake ’em, Tom. Or he might send somebody else with the money. Either way, we nail him.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Wilson said. “You know your problem, Jack? You get an idea and you get attached to it. You know what I mean? You got
too much pride.”

  Jack said nothing, but stared solemnly out the window.

  “Anyway, the guy’s a hustler and all the rest,” Tommy said. “But I don’t make him out to be a cop killer.”

  “Bullshit!” Jack said. “Aside from killing our guys, I know the kind of shit he pulled in Sierra Leone. Word is he had ten guys burned alive to get those diamonds.”

  “Word is,” Wilson repeated. “But no proof. The guy’s a scam artist, I’ll grant you that. Maybe he would do what he has to do, but killing cops . . . that’s out of his league.”

  “You’re fucking naïve, Tommy. He’s playing you . . . he doesn’t know shit about terrorism.”

  “He knows a lot of people. He knows guys who we know are connected to al-Qaeda. You think I pulled him out of jail without checking? There’s something driving you, Jackie. Something making you see things that aren’t there.”

  “Hey,” Jack said. “You already fucked me by taking this piece of shit out of prison. Now I gotta put up with your third-rate psychoanalysis? I don’t know what went down here today, but I’m still betting Steinbach is our boy.”

  Wilson laughed dismissively and opened the door.

  “See you later, babe. If you want me to keep you company for another stakeout, it’s gonna cost you. For a hundred and fifty bucks an hour I can bring CDs, a picnic basket, and a red- checkered tablecloth.”

  He laughed, slammed the door, and ran down the rain-soaked street toward his car.

  Jack slammed his hand on the steering wheel as he watched him go.

  A few minutes later, Oscar was back in the car as the two agents drove by Frederick’s of Hollywood. A six-foot-five-inch black transvestite in a shimmering bronze miniskirt and ballet shoes leaned up against the window, pressing his/her hands on the glass as if she was trying to crawl inside.

  “Look at the dude,” Oscar said. “Think about all the families who come out here from Iowa and the heartland just to catch a glimpse of Hollywood glamour.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. Ordinarily he enjoyed riffing with Oscar about Hollywood decadence. It was like water-cooler talk, familiar and even comforting in an odd way. How fucked are we? Very fucked. But now he felt like something was crawling inside of him. Like he was a freak for being taken in by Steinbach. Like his old mentor had maybe taken him in. Like everybody in the world was a fucking liar. And after all these years, that fact still hurt.

  “You know why Steinbach didn’t show? ’Cause fucking Tommy tipped him off .”

  Now Oscar looked a little shocked.

  “Hey, I don’t know,” he said. “Tommy’s competitive, but you think he’d go that far?”

  “Yeah, I do. He got the guy immunity, didn’t he? He thinks the guy is going to tip him about something big . . . maybe a dirty bomb in the Grove. So he’s gonna try and keep him clean.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Oscar said as they drove east past Ca- huenga. “Man, that’s fucked. But what about Sadler? They wouldn’t tip him, too.”

  “Unless Sadler was dirty, too?” Jack said. “Involved with Stein- bach in a way that would put him away?”

  “Fucking immunity!” Oscar said. “That’s the deal. You protect one bad guy, then you find yourself protecting all his skell pals. Makes you wonder which side we’re on.”

  “Tell me about it!” Jack said. “Listen, I think it’s about time we paid a little visit to Nicki. Put a little pressure on him.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “I’m down with that. Let’s head down to the Magic Mile.”

  They pulled out of their parking place, running over a discarded Frederick’s doll that had fallen off a delivery truck.

  “Hey, there’s something you should know,” Oscar said. “I talked to our sweet little lamb Phil Marshall today. He looked up all the information on Forrester. I also had him check Blakely’s and Hughes’s records again.”

  “Come up with anything?”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “Blakely has a numbered Swiss bank account, which, of course, we can’t see.”

  “Cute,” Jack said. “Hughes?”

  “He has accounts in the Caymans, under three dummy corporations. And Forrester has been buying real estate in Todos Santos, down below Baja.”

  “So there is something to what Michelle told me.”

  “What?”

  “She called me late last night. She said Zac Blakely was hanging out with Timmy Andreen in the Valley, at his club. She said she knows Andreen was involved with Steinbach.”

  “Wow!” Oscar said. “This thing is like a freaking octopus.” “Yeah, that it is, Oscar. That it is.”

  As they stood in the rain on Wilshire Boulevard, Oscar looked at a wig in one of the endless shops on the Miracle Mile and remembered a clown he’d seen as a kid in the circus in Tijuana, a huge, muscled clown who had bright red hair, and who had eaten fire. The clown had scared Oscar so bad, he never wanted to go to the circus again. There was something about him that seemed supernatural, like the devil’s clown . . . Maybe that’s what they were now, a couple of the devil’s clowns, trying to solve murders that were already fixed.

  Jack hit the buzzer to Nicki Sadler’s office for the third time, but got no answer.

  “Maybe he’s not in,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah, possibly. But then why is his Caddy sitting right there.”

  He pointed to Sadler’s black 1995 Cadillac parked illegally at an expired meter. There was a wet ticket bleeding blue ink on the rain-spotted windshield.

  Jack hit the super’s buzzer, and after a few seconds a voice came over the ancient speaker.

  “Yeah, what ’chu want?”

  “FBI, sir. We need to speak with you.”

  The super was a Mexican named Ariel Rodriguez. He had one arm and wore a Dodgers shirt with Gibson written on the back.

  “Police, huh?” he said, eyeing them in the smelly elevator.

  “Yeah. You know Nicki Sadler.”

  “The attorney? Yes, I do. I want him to get my son a rap- record deal. My son Xavier is a great rapper. Eminem is zero compared to him.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “I’ll bet.”

  “He is, man,” the super said. “He’s deep.”

  “You seen Mr. Sadler today?” Jack said.

  “Yeah, I talked to him an hour ago. He was jest coming into the office. He said he’s gonna get my kid . . .”

  “I got it,” Oscar said. “Your kid’s gonna be an American Idol.”

  “He is,” the super said. “If you two guys heard him rap . . .

  He makes 50 Cent sound like a quarter.”

  Jack looked at Oscar as they got off the elevator at the third floor.

  The door to Sadler’s office was closed and locked. They rang the bell three times. No one answered.

  “Open it,” Jack said.

  “I can’t do that, man,” the super said. “I bother Mr. Sadler, and I don’t get no rap deal for my son. You should hear him like rap. He makes Snoop Dogg sound like Lassie.”

  “Open the door, please,” Jack said.

  “Well, okay, I guess,” the super said. “But I hope this doesn’t make him too pissed off .”

  He stuck a key from his huge ring into the lock and turned it.

  Jack and Oscar walked inside. The super stayed back a little, pretending he wasn’t part of this obvious intrusion.

  There was an outer office with an old termite-eaten desk in it, and a couple of pictures of Nicki Sadler and some forgotten blonde on the wall.

  Then there was a second door, an old-fashioned glass door with Sadler’s name stenciled on it.

  They walked over and Jack tried it. It opened, slowly, making a groaning noise.

  Inside, there was another desk — this one a lot bigger — made of steel. Behind it Nicki Sadler slumped sideways, his head resting on the high back of his chair. There was a red line on his neck, which stretched from his left ear to somewhere under his right eye. It was thin, like a red line on a map which showed a bad stretch of highway
. The blood had poured down his shirt and pooled on the desktop.

  His left hand was on the telephone, but he’d never picked up the receiver.

  The super came in and made a terrible choking noise.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ. Mira . . . Oh, Jesus!”

  He staggered back out in the anteroom, gagging.

  Jack looked at Oscar who was staring at the open window and the fire escape.

  “Looks like Nicki pushed the wrong guy,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Let’s call it in.”

  “I wonder what Tommy Wilson would say now,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “You don’t think that Tommy would let Steinbach kill Sadler, do you?”

  “I don’t like to think it,” Jack said. “I wish that idea would grow legs and walk out of my mind.”

  23

  LONG AFTER SADLER’S BODY had been taken to the morgue and the lab boys had dusted the room for prints, taken photos of the scene, and picked up hair follicles and blood samples, Jack and Oscar checked Sadler’s computer for evidence which might link him to Steinbach. Also Blakely, Hughes, and Andreen. But nothing came up in any of the dead lawyer’s financial records.

  Jack stretched and leaned against the crumbling old wall.

  “I know the guy is dirty,” he said. “He’s as much as admitted it to me. The cocksucker. He’s laughing at us right now.”

  He looked down at the screen, which glowed off Oscar’s face.

  Then Oscar smiled and turned to him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Look at this name. Timmy Andreen. That’s the guy who runs a place called the Valentine Room down in the Valley. Timmy-boy is into all kinds of nefarious shit. Fences stolen jewels. Used to be a hit man . . . worked with the late Jules Furth who, if you recall, was in business with Steinbach.”

  Jack leaned down behind Oscar and looked at the ledger, which read Payment Owed . . . 200,500 . . . S.

  “S for Steinbach?”

  “Could be,” Oscar said. “Maybe these are our boys. Maybe they hit Zac and Hughes for Steinbach and received their blood money from Sadler.”