by David Freed
We came to a battered metal dumpster behind a restaurant that stunk of rotting vegetables. I ordered them to stop.
“You don’t really think you can get away with this,” Manson said.
I ordered the goon to hand over his phone, which he did, then told him to get in the dumpster. He refused.
“This jacket, asshole, cost $2,000, US,” he said.
I thumped him on the forehead, a sweet, hard thwack with the butt of the pistol that opened a gash over his eye. Blood spurted down his face and onto the jacket.
“Now it’s worth $1,000,” I said. “Shall we go for 500?”
Grudgingly he climbed in. I flipped the lid shut, keeping the pistol and my attention trained on Manson. He glared at me vengefully behind his shades.
“Sweet little dog. What’s her name?”
“Fuck you.”
“That,” I said, “has to be the worst name for a pet I’ve ever heard of.”
I took the leash from his hand and looped it around a standpipe without taking my eyes off of him. His pooch didn’t protest. Then I shoved Manson face-first into a wall and sent his sunglasses flying. I kicked his feet apart and frisked him.
“Not much of a guard dog, but she sure heels well,” I said. “Most dogs, you take ’em for a walk, it’s like they’re walking you.”
Charlie Manson was wearing an ankle holster and a .22- caliber Walther. I jammed the pistol into my belt, under my windbreaker, and smashed his cell phone against the wall for shock value more than anything else.
“You’re gonna talk to me,” I said, “or you’re gonna get dead.”
“What is it you want?”
I turned him around so we were facing eye-to-eye. “The truth.”
He smiled in an evil way. “The only way you will leave Prague,” he said, “is in a box. That is the truth.”
“Bummer. After having to deal with you and your associates last night, I was hoping for at least an upgrade to business class.”
The Buddha doesn’t condone violence. All violence does, he believed, is to perpetuate more violence. I respectfully disagree. Sometimes the only thing evil understands is violence. I pressed my forearm against Manson’s upper chest and jammed the pistol barrel between his lips.
“OK, here’s how it’s gonna go down,” I said. “I’m going to give you three seconds to think carefully about your answer to the following. After three seconds, I’m going to remove this gun from your mouth. If you tell me what I want, you’ll live. If you don’t tell me what I want, this will be your last minute on earth. Any questions?”
He shook his head no, his eyes like black, lifeless holes.
“Good. OK, here we go. The question is, where do I find Emil Sokol?”
I LEFT Manson with his goon in the dumpster and ordered them to stay put for half an hour. I warned them that my “associate” would be watching, to make sure they didn’t leave early, and that if they did, Manson’s doggie would die. Not that I had any associates in Prague, or that I actually would’ve carried out the threat. People are easy to shoot, but a dog? Forget about it. I told Manson where he’d be able to find the pooch. She’d be tied to a lamppost three blocks away in front of a bookstore I’d seen on the cab ride over. Then I ran, hoping my threats would give me a workable head start. When I reached the aforementioned bookstore, I secured the dog to the aforementioned lamppost, petted her good-bye, flagged down a taxi, and instructed the cabbie to take me to Karoliny Svetle 34—the address Manson had coughed up for Sokol.
I wasn’t oblivious to the potential that Manson had lied about the address and sent me off on a goose chase, or, worse, set me up. But if I was reassured by anything, it was that I’d scared the piss out of him—literally. Standing there with a pistol barrel in his mouth, Manson had wet himself. A man that frightened generally speaks the truth.
“You are from where?” The cab driver wore rimless glasses and a well-trimmed beard.
“America. California.”
“My cousin, he is big computer guy in America. He lives in Keen-tookie.”
“Kentucky, the Bluegrass State. Five million people, fifteen last names.”
The cabbie looked up at me in his rearview mirror. “You look like you get in big fight,” he said.
“You should see the other guy.”
We drove across the Legion Bridge without speaking. I got out the two pistols I’d liberated from Fabio and Charlie Manson and stashed them both between the cushions of the backseat. No use getting caught while armed and spending an extra twenty years in some hell hole of a Czech prison left over from the Soviet occupation. I was already in enough trouble as it was.
The address Manson had surrendered belonged to Prague’s Verneuil Palace Hotel. It made the luxury digs where I’d been bunking on the other side of the river look hovel-like by comparison. Jags and Rolls-Royces were parked in the brick motor court out front. I paid my fare with money from the man I’d shot the night before, got out, and walked in. A doorman in a cape tipped his top hat and ushered me into a lobby of towering archways and frescoed ceilings. The floors were mahogany buffed to a high sheen. A hushed, unhurried elegance permeated the place.
“Yes, sir?” The front desk clerk was tall and impeccably groomed, a poster boy for metrosexuals the world over. My smashed-up face seemed not to faze him at all.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, a guest of the hotel.”
“I’d be happy to help you with that, sir.”
“His name is Emil Sokol.”
“Can you spell that, please?”
I did.
The desk clerk pecked on his keyboard and frowned at his computer screen. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t appear to have anyone staying with us at the moment with that name.”
This didn’t come as a bulletin. Sokol was reputed to be an international crime boss. International crime bosses don’t generally live in porous, old-money European hotels. They live in highly secure, nouveau riche compounds in places like Medellín and Sinaloa, guarded by electrified fences, German shepherds, and platoons of triggermen.
“My mistake,” I said. “He’s probably staying somewhere else. Sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
“No inconvenience at all, sir.”
Holding down the concierge’s desk across the lobby was an older man with a blue blazer and a world-class double chin. I told him I was looking for my “best buddy,” Emil Sokol. The name rang no bells with him. Nor did it with the bellmen I chatted up, nor with the housekeeper passing through the lobby with an armful of freshly laundered towels—although in fairness to her, she seemed to speak only Czech.
Wherever Sokol was, I concluded, he wasn’t at the Verneuil Palace Hotel. Charlie Manson had duped me. I thought about how much I’d enjoy ruining his day even more than I already had, if only given another chance. He and Fabio would be out of the dumpster by now, stinking of rotting cabbage, and coming after me with a vengeance—probably with reinforcements.
Returning to my own hotel to retrieve my duffel bag would’ve risked death. Ditto making my way directly to the airport. They’d be expecting me to show up there, and probably Prague’s central train station too. I intended to make my way to an outlying rail hub, lay up a day or two until things quieted down, then get to Germany or Austria and from there, home.
I wasn’t about to leave the Verneuil Palace through the front door. If there’s one rule in intelligence operations, it’s that one never exfiltrates a location from the same point he infiltrated it. Better to keep the hounds guessing. I went searching for a rear exit, threading my way through well-dressed couples milling about and businessmen in fine suits chatting with each other. Huddled in the corner, in overstuffed armchairs, a stunning brunette with impossibly long legs was conversing with a young, dark-haired hunk garbed in tennis togs. I assessed them for possible threats as I did everyone—eye movement, hand placement, gun bulges under their clothes—but discerned none.
“Mr. Cordell Logan?”
The ten
nis hunk got up and walked toward me, smiling.
“It is you, isn’t it?”
“Possibly,” I said.
His right hand was outstretched. “Emil Sokol,” he said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
TWELVE
Remember Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, that TV show in which Robin Leach each week took viewers inside the obscenely opulent homes of the ultrawealthy? Emil Sokol’s seven-room residential suite at the Verneuil Palace Hotel would’ve qualified. Priceless antique furnishings, priceless oil paintings, a priceless view of Prague. The alleged crime boss proudly showed me around the suite’s great room.
“This Alfons Mucha is one I’m particularly fond of,” Sokol said, pointing out a painting that hung over the marble fireplace—a Victorian-era woman with flowers in her hair. “Mucha composed it in 1895, during his Paris period.”
“Sweet.”
“Are you an enthusiast of the visual arts, Mr. Logan? My impression is that most of your fellow countrymen sadly know very little about art in general.”
“Are you kidding? We’re the people who gave the world Thomas Kinkade, painter of light.”
Sokol smiled. His teeth were as perfect as his English. “Fortunately my avocation has allowed me financial security and the opportunity to pursue areas of interest I could never have imagined had my country remained under Soviet occupation.”
“What exactly is your avocation, Mr. Sokol?”
He ignored the question. “How rude of me. I forgot to offer you something to drink. You must be quite parched after running around all morning.”
“Got any guava juice?”
“I’m sure we can find some,” Sokol said pleasantly.
He nodded to a thug standing guard by the suite’s ten-foot entry doors—the same thug who’d patted me down for weapons coming in.
“Please,” Sokol said, gesturing to a pair of leather armchairs near the fireplace as the thug disappeared down a hallway. “Make yourself comfortable.”
We sat.
“So you’re not planning to kill me?”
“Kill you?” He laughed. “Mr. Logan, please, that was so last night. After all the trouble you went through to find me, that is the furthest thought from my mind. You are my guest.”
I wasn’t so sure.
If he was forty, it wasn’t by much. Five eleven, one sixty. Tightly curled sandy hair. Deep blue eyes that seemed never to blink. He exuded an imperious confidence that some might have found intimidating.
“So,” he said, crossing his legs and folding his hands placidly over his knees, “I understand you shot one of my men.”
“He didn’t leave me much choice.”
Sokol nodded empathetically and gazed out at a helicopter flying past his floor-to-ceiling windows. “I understand,” he said.
“I’m not sure I do. Why did you put him on me?”
“I didn’t. Another of my employees did. I try not to micromanage my personnel, Mr. Logan. One of them made a decision. Sometimes mistakes are made. In this situation, the mistake has been corrected. The offending party, who I understand you deposited in a garbage receptacle, will be remaining there indefinitely, along with another of his associates. Let’s just let it go at that, shall we?” His sightline shifted over my shoulder. “Ah, yes, here we are.”
Into the room, bearing coffee, pitchers of chilled fruit juice and platters piled high with french pastries, came three major league head-turners. They were dressed in a conservative yet stylish manner—skirts, blouses, and heels. As they went about setting up the food and drinks on an inlaid mahogany table between us, Sokol ran his hand up under the skirt of the woman standing nearest him. She pretended not to notice.
“Bon appetite, Mr. Logan,” Sokol said. “When you’ve had a sufficiency, feel free to get acquainted with any one of the young ladies you see here, or all three, if you’d prefer. They’re all quite talented, I can assure you.”
I helped myself to a croissant even though I was still full from breakfast. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer,” I said, “but the people I work for would have a meltdown if I turned in an expense account like that.”
Sokol chuckled. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Logan. I’m talking gratis—a freebie, as you Americans call it. It would be my pleasure, given the troubles you’ve had to endure and the ‘insensitivities,’ shall we say, displayed by some of my people during your brief stay here in Prague.”
Again I declined.
“Ah, a man of principal, not of the flesh,” Sokol said, beaming. “An increasing rarity in this world.” He nodded to the women and watched them as they left the room.
“About that avocation . . .” I said.
“If you’re talking about my work, Mr. Logan, I provide a valuable service to powerful men, men who don’t always have the time to stop and smell the roses. I’m not going to sit here and make apologies for that.”
“Some people would say you’re nothing but a pimp in tennis whites.”
“People can say whatever they’d like.”
The croissant melted in my mouth.
“The man I shot last night, who was he?”
Sokol grunted as he bit into a chocolate éclair, his eyes hard and flat like stones, and, for a moment, I saw beyond his thinly veneered civility. “An expendable incompetent,” he said. Then the moment passed and he smiled. “I’m told you answer directly to the president of the United States.” “I answer to people who answer to the president of the United States.”
“I see.” Sokol sipped his coffee with a pinkie outstretched. “Well, just so you know, I’m a great admirer of your commander-in-chief, on whose good side I wish to remain.”
“Then you can start by telling me why you had Roy Hollister killed.”
The smile slowly departed his face. His eyes didn’t waver from mine.
“WHERE THE hell are you, Logan?”
“At the moment? In the men’s room at the Prague airport.”
“You’re not dead? I thought you’d be dead by now.” The relief in Buzz’s voice over the phone sounded real, if only fleeting. “All I can say is, it’s good you’re not. I wouldn’t want to have to fill out all that freaking paperwork.”
“I’m genuinely touched, Buzz. I never knew you cared so much.”
“Cared? I couldn’t care less. The only thing I care about is the intel you were sent over there to get.”
“I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
“You’ll fill me in now.”
“Buzz, my flight boards in five minutes.”
“You don’t get it, Logan. I got people in Washington, way up the food chain, breathing down my neck like it’s the end of life as we know it. They want answers, and they want ’em now. Spare me the chapter and verse and just gimme the broad strokes. I can read the nuts and bolts in your after-action report.”
I briefed him on what Sokol had told me: That on multiple occasions, Roy Hollister had used his jet to transport call girls from Europe to the United States and back, and that for each roundtrip passenger, Sokol paid Hollister $25,000. All of the flights were between Prague and New York or Washington, DC.
“Why not fly commercial?” Buzz asked. “Way cheaper that way.”
“A lot of these ladies’ names show up on no-fly lists. Some also have outstanding warrants. Security is considerably more lax flying in and out of the country on executive aircraft. No TSA checkpoints, typically minimal DHS presence on the ramp.”
At one point, Sokol had broken down and cried crocodile tears, I told Buzz. Sokol’s top call girl, a slinky blonde he called Nina, had disappeared weeks earlier. He’d shown me a photo of her in a small bikini, the pierced naval, the big Kim Kardashian sunglasses, lounging poolside somewhere, sipping an umbrella drink. A scorpion was tattooed on her left flank. He told me how much he loved her and how he’d hoped to marry her one day.
“Sounds like a bad soap opera to me,” Buzz said, “and none of that comes close to addressing why I sent you over ther
e, Logan: to find out whether a certain member of Congress and close friend of my boss had anything to do with the untimely demise of a certain safari leader from your neck of the woods.”
Sokol, I said, had denied any knowledge of Roy Hollister’s murder, and denied having had a motive to commit it. Even had Hollister been forced to name names to a federal grand jury, there would have been little chance of Sokol being extradited to the United States, given that many leading Czech law enforcement officials were among his most loyal customers.
“You’re still not getting to the heart of it, Logan. Did you ask him about Walton?”
“He said he’d never heard of Walton.”
“And you believed him?”
“To the extent that I believe anybody.”
Buzz exhaled. “I’ll pass it up the chain,” he said. “Call me when you’re stateside.”
The flight was to Munich, then a connection through Frankfurt and on to Los Angeles, before I could look forward to squeezing into a cramped regional jet to Rancho Bonita. When I wasn’t thinking about my painfully battered face, I thought about Savannah and her father, and how he’d gotten me in to this mess. I thought about all that happened in Prague. I wondered if “Mary,” who’d called before I’d left home to clue me in on Sokol’s prostitution ring, and Sokol’s beloved Nina, the hooker who’d gone missing, were one and the same. I wondered if Sokol was lying when he told me he’d never heard of Congressman Pierce Walton. I wondered whether Czech investigators would figure out who had shot a man blocks from where I’d been staying in Prague and would demand my return. Touching down in Los Angeles, a continent away from where the damage had been done, brought little relief.
My layover at LAX was fifty minutes, barely enough time to be herded off the plane and make it through customs before racing between terminals to my final connecting flight. I checked my e-mail on the run. The only message of note was from Emirates pilot Evan Gantz, who’d flown for Roy Hollister. He’d be returning to California in a couple of days to attend a wedding. He would get back to me, he said, letting me know if he had time to meet.
“Re hookers and politicians,” Gantz wrote. “I’m curious to know what you know.”
