Runaway Heart

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "Your what?"

  "Just play along," Jack said, and strolled toward Russell, pulling a pen out of his pocket along with his small spiral detective notebook. He waited for a hole in both the conversation and the swirling entourage, then stepped neatly through both.

  "Mr. Ibanazi? Clark Lane, with 213 Magazine. This is one of the nicest events we've been to in months." 213 was the first area code assigned to Beverly Hills and was also the name of a slick magazine that featured its rich and famous.

  Russell Ibanazi's head snapped up like he'd just been hooked with a twenty-pound test line.

  "213?" the Chief grinned. "You guys thinkin' about doing a story on me?"

  "Maybe… maybe… could be… could be," Jack mused. "This is our society editor, Lois Kent."

  "Hi," Susan smiled, seductively.

  From that point Russ Ibanazi was hooked like a Baja game fish. He shook Jack's hand energetically. He smiled at Susan longingly.

  "I just started my own record label. That's why we're having the party. To promote Miracle Records." He exuded charm.

  "Watch out for the critics on that one," Jack warned. "They're sarcastic bastards. You don't wanta give them an easy shot."

  Russell's face scrunched up into a confused frown.

  Jack spread his hands. " 'If it's a good song, it's a miracle.' Easy slam. See the problem?"

  Ibanazi's face fell. "I never thought of that. I see your point. We just went in business. Maybe I should come up with something else?"

  "I love this record angle, Clark," Susan enthused. "I think we could be talking cover."

  "Maybe… maybe… could be… could be. If you can get Mimi to go for it."

  Russell smiled broadly, trying to close them. "We just finished our first week in the studio. Next week we do slap backs. My songs mostly. I compose my own stuff."

  "This record producer thing is definitely our angle," Susan gushed.

  They had him. Just reel the boy in, Jack thought. So he looked skeptical and sang the chorus. "Maybe… maybe… could be… could be."

  Russell steered them away from the cabana and his guests, heading toward his house. Jack guessed he wanted privacy so he could nail down the cover without interruptions.

  Chief Ibanazi led them through a patio door into his study, then locked it behind him.

  "When my songs come my inspiration I always work in here. Once I'm in the zone my shit slams." He opened a wall cabinet and produced a sound system and a keyboard.

  "I see some wide shots in here, Clark," Susan enthused, framing the room with her hands. "All this equipment… Russell at the piano." She was really getting into it.

  "It's not a piano, Lois, it's a Yamaha Sound Machine," Russell corrected her. "I design sounds by sampling everything from automobile horns to bagpipes."

  "Mimi's gonna flip, Clark. This could be perfect for the cover story on the 'L.A. Sounds' edition," Susan said.

  "Maybe… maybe… could be… could be."

  Russell was drooling. The cover of the "L.A. Sounds" edition. Does it get any better than that?

  "Look, Russell…" Jack started.

  "I go by Izzy." Off their puzzled looks, "Short for Ibanazi."

  "Right. Very cool," Jack continued. "So Izzy, if we're going for the 'Sounds' cover, Mimi is gonna demand all her usual cover profile and background stuff. She's a stickler for facts. If we bring this to Mimi we gotta really sell it. A take-no-prisoners approach always works best with her. You with me?"

  "Right. Of course."

  "So I'm gonna need the whole souffle why you're living in Beverly Hills and not out on the res. I need the old mystic music from the native soul rap. See where I'm heading, Lois?"

  "It's fantastic," Susan said.

  Izzy's face actually fell. "Do we really need all that? The reservation stuff, I mean. It's so… Dances With Wolves."

  "Oh no, Izzy, you misunderstand," Susan jumped in. "It's not for the magazine. We don't want the reservation material in the body of the story. 213, as you know, is very high-profile. A Beverly Hills society magazine. But Mimi absolutely demands full backgrounds on all cover subjects."

  They watched his handsome face scrunch up again, like a squirrel trying to crack a walnut. The last thing Izzy wanted was a 213 cover shot of him with a peace pipe sitting in front of a rusting trailer on an Indian blanket. He saw himself in an Armani jacket and Gucci shoes, maybe some cool leather pants.

  " 'Course, if you'd rather not…" Jack stood and put his pen away.

  Izzy actually lunged across the desk and caught Jack's arm. "No, no. It's okay. No problem. If it's just for Mimi, what's it gonna hurt?"

  "Exactly," Jack nodded. He had his spiral pad and pen back out in a flash, and licked the end of the ball point for effect, leaving a little streak of ink on his tongue. "You're the current chief of the Ten-Eyck tribe?" Jack asked.

  "Yes. Ibanazis have been chiefs going back two hundred years."

  "Mimi'll probably want to know exactly where the reservation is located," Susan prompted.

  "It's way out past Indio," Russell said, and now he was wrinkling his nose, as if he could almost smell it all the way from Bel Air. "But it's nothing," he added quickly, "just seventeen hundred acres of old truck tires, cactus, and jackrabbits. It's worthless land."

  "I see. Okay," Jack looked at Susan, then back at Izzy. "If it's so poor, how do you afford all this?"

  "Oh… now I see where you're heading."

  Jack was glad Izzy got it, because he wasn't sure he did.

  "I lease the reservation out," Izzy continued. "I mean, the tribe leases it to the federal government."

  "You do?" Jack looked at Susan, who smiled.

  "Yeah. It's a great deal, too," Izzy went on. "Each month the government pays us about two thousand dollars an acre on seventeen hundred acres. There're only thirty-two members in our tribe, so once we cut it up the annual take comes to over a million dollars apiece. My end, for instance, covers the payments on this place, living expenses, and my monthly recording studio fees. In return, we had to vote in a non-Indian administrator that the government chose for us. He just deals with the day-to-day running of the reservation. We moved out. Now most of us live around here or on the far West Side."

  "Who's the administrator?" Jack asked, guessing it was Paul Nichols's brother or cousin.

  "Scott Nichols," Izzy replied, confirming Jack's suspicion. "But, like I told you, it's just a pile of rocks and gopher holes. Seventeen hundred acres of nothing. Your magazine wouldn't care about it. Dingy, y'know… few old buildings an' shit."

  "Right… right." Jack sounded disappointed. He made a few notes and furrowed his brow theatrically, like this story was about to get up off his notebook, stagger around the room, then fall over dead with a spike through its heart.

  "Something wrong?" Izzy leaned forward anxiously.

  "Well… I just…" He let it hang there.

  "What? You just what?" Izzy was actually wringing his hands now.

  "Well, I was wondering why the federal government would pay the Ten-Eyck tribe almost forty million a year for seventeen hundred acres of cactus and gopher holes. Doesn't seem to make sense."

  "Oh," Izzy actually sighed in relief. "I can tell you that. That's easy: EPA standards."

  "EPA standards?" Susan and Jack did that one together. Pretty good harmony, too. Maybe Izzy would give them a recording contract.

  "Yeah. See, Indian land isn't subject to the same state and federal laws that the rest of the country is. Each tribe in the U.S. is like an independent nation, and we can make our own laws. The federal government has big toxic waste dumping problems for both nuclear and chemical gook. They don't have enough EPA-sanctioned sites to handle it all, so they started renting a few remote reservations where they could dump it cheap, without all the EPA hassles. It's a good deal for them and for us. Right after we signed the lease they started to dig a huge waste pit. Started even before we left. A hole to pump all that toxic shit into. On the res there's no EPA
inspection, so the feds don't have to worry about tests to check for pollution of the groundwater. Nothing. As long as the Tribal Council votes an okay, then it's done."

  "Which you obviously did," Jack said.

  "You bet."

  "So that's how you end up living like this," Jack motioned toward the garden and smiled. "Pretty cool."

  "Right." Then Izzy wrinkled his handsome brow as it finally occurred to him that maybe he was telling too much. "But please keep this confidential. I mean, all the EPA stuff and everything. That gets out, it's really gonna cause problems. This has to be just between us."

  "Right, us and Mimi," Jack nodded.

  "For background," Izzy repeated.

  "Don't worry," Susan chipped in. "213 does stories about celebrities, Marvin and Barbara Davis fundraisers, stuff like that. Nobody on our staff wants to write about a dumb old toxic hole in the ground."

  Izzy looked relieved. "Thank God." Then his smile lit him up. He really was a great-looking guy. "You guys wanna hear some of my new sides?"

  "God, wouldn't that be a gas," Susan said, shooting a do-we-have-to look at Jack.

  They had to.

  Izzy's music was hard to describe. He had the Yamaha Sound Machine on gargle mode, or maybe it was on cats fighting. It lingered between muffled screeches and something that resembled a four-car traffic accident. The rhythm section sounded like drunks pounding ash can lids with hammers.

  People outside were banging on the door, adding to the racket, but Izzy was in the zone, lost in his tunes. Somebody out there was shouting about there being some kind of problem with the catering, but Izzy didn't care. He was slamming.

  An hour later Jack and Susan managed to shake away, but before they left Izzy gave them both business cards.

  Sure enough Miracle Records.

  Jack shook his head and frowned as he looked at the card. "How 'bout Orgasm Music? If it's good music, it's an orgasm."

  Izzy smiled. "God… I love it. If you don't mind, maybe I'll use it."

  "My gift."

  As Jack and Susan headed toward the front door, she smiled at him. "Clark Lane and Lois Kent?"

  "Just trying to keep things interesting," Jack said. Then they turned a corner and ran into two uniformed cops who had just arrived and were asking who owned the green XKE parked up the street. Jack grabbed Susan's arm and diverted her up the hall. "Shit. When I was on the job a car theft hardly ever got solved."

  "Maybe it's because they weren't out looking for a pissed-off D.A.'s classic Jag," Susan observed.

  When they reached the end of the hall, Jack smiled at the coat-check girl. "She had the red fox with the snakeskin collar and cuffs," Jack said, adding, "I lost her ticket."

  "The what?" the coat-check person said, wrinkling her nose at the description.

  Susan smiled and nodded. She didn't know what the hell he was doing, but she was playing along as instructed.

  "I don't think I saw anything like that," the girl hedged.

  "Can I look?" Jack asked. "It's got her initials in it."

  "I guess."

  She led Jack into the coatroom and watched him like a prison guard while he went through half a dozen coats. He found what he was looking for in the side pocket of a nicely tailored gray gabardine.

  A blue valet parking stub.

  He deftly switched tickets.

  "I don't see it… maybe it's in the hall closet," he hedged, then pulled Susan out of there.

  They sauntered past the cops, down to the driveway. Jack handed the new blue claim check to one of the snooty red-jacketed valets, who sprinted off to get the car.

  "I can hardly wait to see what we'll get this time," Jack said.

  "If it wasn't a class-A felony, it would be more fun," Susan complained.

  A beautiful, royal blue Rolls Royce Corniche convertible with a champagne interior rolled down the hill and stopped. The valet opened the door and looked at them with appreciation. Jack got behind the wheel, handing the guy a folded-up one-dollar bill, then pulled away fast before he could unroll the bill and throw an orange or something.

  Susan began digging in the glove box for the registration. "Ever heard of anybody named James K. Hahn?" she asked.

  "You're shitting me? Our luck can't be that bad. This is Mayor Hahn's car?"

  "Just kidding," she smiled. "It belongs to Carlos Ibanazi."

  "See. Not even stolen. Purchased with our very own tax dollars," Jack said, already feeling better about the theft. "We're gonna have to ditch it, though. Too obvious. We better get a rental, like your dad suggested." Then, to get her off the theft, he changed the subject. "I can hardly wait to see your dad in court. All dressed up, leaning on the rail, representing a chimp."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight.

  Herman's phone rang, blasting him out of a deep,

  dreamless sleep. He rolled over and snatched it up. After listening to the recorded wakeup message, he called the federal court clerk's office, and confirmed that his TRO had arrived. He had been assigned a hearing for 10:30 that morning in Courtroom Sixteen.

  Looking at Jack Wirta's rumpled, empty bed, he rolled to a sitting position feeling surprisingly good. He showered his big, ugly body, soaping and lathering, being careful not to get the stitches too wet on his lower abdomen. Then he toweled down and shaved with extra care, dressed in his number 4s, using a Wellington knot on his black-and-white-striped tie. His last grooming touch was to plaster his unruly hair down with water.

  Herm surveyed his sagging, basset hound reflection and said, "You are one goddamn beautiful son of a bitch."

  He woke Susan and Sandy by knocking on their door, then found Jack having breakfast out on the patio overlooking the ocean. Herman heard him come in around three, and rolled over and snarled at him to be quiet, before going right back to sleep.

  "Our TRO goes before a judge at ten thirty, Federal Court Sixteen," Herman said as he sat at the table. "A very lucky number, if you believe in numerology."

  Jack looked puzzled.

  "Sixteen. One and six equals seven."

  "Shit, I always miss that one," Jack said sourly.

  "How'd you and Susan do?"

  "Depends on the category."

  Herman looked troubled. "It isn't that I don't want you to take her out, Jack. Hey, she makes her own decisions on who she dates. It's just now may not be the most appropriate time."

  "I'm known for my bad timing. Celebrated for it, in fact."

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then Herman reached over and snagged a slice of Jack's rye toast, buttered it, ladled on some strawberry jam, and started eating.

  "Chief Ibanazi lives at 264 Chalon Road in Bel Air," Jack said. "It's a three-acre Spanish mansion. He's a record producer just setting up a new company. So far, I think he's still just working on getting cool stationery. The real news is why he's not living on the reservation." Then Jack proceeded to explain the federal government lease and the seventeen hundred acres rented by the feds to beat the EPA restrictions. Herm listened while he finished the first slice of toast, then helped himself to another.

  "I can get you some of your own," Jack offered.

  "Always tastes better off someone else's plate."

  "Perfect sentiment from a lawyer."

  "I think we need to find out what's out there on that reservation," Herman said.

  "I just told you a pit full of toxic or nuclear waste. No EPA leakproof containers, no EPA standards, no ground-pool testing so everybody drinking the water out in Indio will probably glow in the dark ten years from now."

  "How do we know it's really toxic waste?" Herm was skeptical.

  "Ahh… you mean a CIA cover story? Conspiracy, right?"

  "Right." Herman took another piece of toast.

  "Steal another slice and you're gonna wear this fork as a tie? _ +

  pin.

  "Jesus, you're touchy." Herman grinned; he was really enjoying the morning… the crashing waves and cool ocean mist. He was looking forward to the legal j
ousting that would take place in a couple of hours.

  "I think you should go out to Van Nuys airport, rent a plane, head to Indio, find the reservation, and do a fly-over," Herman suggested.

  "Maybe I'll do that first thing this afternoon."

  "I wouldn't wait for the afternoon."

  "Herman, if you think I'm gonna miss seeing you in court with a monkey as a client, then you've got better drugs than me."

  "Except he's not gonna be there. His DNA chart is gonna be there. It's gonna be very dull."

  "You may be a lot of things, Herman, but dull ain't one of them."

  The good news was that the surprise TRO made DARPA scramble. Their lawyers arrived in the second floor corridor outside of Federal District Courtroom Sixteen obviously unprepared. They sat on wooden benches, riffling through law books propped on their knees. Some were rereading the rules governing TROs, others were studying Herman's show-cause order. There were six of them, and they all looked and dressed identically. If the feds ever started cloning attorneys as well as chimps, Jack thought these guys could be Exhibit One.

  The bad news was, Herman had been notified about ten minutes after he arrived that the judge assigned to the case was none other than his old nemesis, Melissa King. Since that devastating revelation, Herman, Susan, and Sandy had been off in a corner, whispering and gesticulating. Herman's entire strategy had been to get a liberal judge, then squeeze through a legal loophole. Now he was forced to argue his TRO on behalf of Charles the Chimera in front of Melissa the Merciless. Impossible.

  Jack was left standing alone with Dr. Adjemenian. She was in tailored brown, and her long hawk face and sculpted body looked dangerous and ready to rumble.

  "How's Tim?" he said, trying to be friendly and release some tension.

  "We haven't been able to get back to our place for two days," she said angrily. "The landlord said somebody broke in and searched it."

  "Really? Well, my gosh." So much for small talk.

  The bailiff opened the door and stepped into the hall. "Everybody for Judge King's Federal Court hearing on the temporary restraining order against DARPA, we're getting ready to start," he announced.