"No wonder Abe's so pissed off at you!"
"So you're on a first name basis?" Sam asked.
Carlo sat back abruptly and gazed at both of them. "Sam, what are you doing here? You and I both know you don't have a fucking idea what you're messing with."
At least they had cleared up that one. "I was just wondering if you ever thought about expanding."
Carlo snorted. "You're thinking too much, buddy. Abe has his thing, I have mine. He's into all that Hollywood rock star shit. I take it you've met the dude?"
"Right before he dropped a corpse on my doormat, smashed my apartment, and burned down my studio."
Carlo rolled his eyes. "Fuck you, buddy. I still love you, but you're not roping me into this shit, just so you can get even with Abe Smullen."
"Who said anything about getting even? I just want him to leave us alone, but that isn't happening."
"So you figure you can come to me, and I'll put my business on the line for your little shitstorm?"
"Hardly. First of all, I had no idea you were running things—I've been out of it, remember?—and secondly, you came to me. And third, all I was thinking about doing was going to the county offices and pulling the building plans from the original permit—"
"To do what?"
"You're really not interested in expanding? Even if the Western Avenue operation blows up around the Smullens?"
"You're giving me indigestion, and I haven't even eaten yet." Carlo turned and motioned one of his bodyguards into the room. "You want to see where our lunch has got to?"
Apparently, José had been waiting for them to finish talking. And Carlo was clearly done talking. He swept the photographs off the table—into his own pocket—and forced the conversation into more polite territory. They sat there and ate the surprisingly edible food, while Carlo went on and on about all of the ghosts Sam had forgotten from their past. Sam did his best to sound interested, but Carlo didn't care one way or the other. He had evidently grown used to directing the conversation. Afterward, they hugged outside the restaurant in the thick, noisy, polluted air of a South Gate afternoon.
"When those plans show up here," Carlo started, then paused to make sure of Sam's hearing. "When those plans show up here, there better not be the slightest connection back to you, buddy. Anyone thinks I'm getting involved in a Spaulding feud will think I've lost control, and at my age I already get enough of the testing shit."
"I just want a date. In advance."
"For what?"
"I'm teaching the kid the photography business."
"You're not taking pictures of my guys—"
"Of course not. But if Abe's repackaging dope in there, the fireworks will more than make the local news."
Carlo gazed at Sam, still suspicious. "You remember Marco Rodriguez?"
"Sure, of course I do."
"He owns a moving company now. He'll be by this afternoon to clean out your basement for you."
"You—"
"Don't even think about it. You can hold onto a toy or two, but nobody—and especially no fucking Spaulding—is gonna sit in my back yard with that kind of firepower. Deal?"
"I'll have to talk to Lydia about that."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
Carlo watched Sam and Rudy grin at each other with mounting consternation. Sheri had breathlessly told them all about the nighttime forest shooting excursion. In the living room of Henry's arsenal, with Lydia looking on and perfectly content to let her bloody-minded message sink in.
"Maybe you should introduce them," Rudy suggested, opening his mouth for the first time since they arrived.
Sam laughed. "Too dangerous for my amigo Carlo. Send Marco over," he finally agreed with a punch of his mystified friend's arm. The quick gesture stopped everyone and set the bodyguards to twitching. Of course, Sam realized, especially out here on a public street. Carlo really had grown up into a much bigger and more dangerous personality than he ever would have imagined. And with Henry's old Alta-Baja-California network to keep him informed. As in a quizzical glance Carlo threw at Rudy now, as he asked Sam, "So who was the Baja shooter?"
That took both of them by surprise. "You've been talking to Rique?" Sam asked.
"What do you expect? Mischa's boat disappears, and three bodies come ashore full of bullets, just as a Spaulding shows up on vacation. Doesn't take a fucking history professor. Rique called me as soon as you drove off."
Sam nodded. He had wondered how long that bit of legend would take to percolate across the border. Still, no harm in a little false advertising, Henry-style, keeping the arguments short. He nodded in Rudy's direction. "That would be the girlfriend."
"The boat or the bullets?"
"Both. She blew up the boat to cover the bullets."
"Shit man!" Carlo exploded with laughter. "How do you guys sleep at night? I won't even let my woman near a frying pan without my boys in the kitchen!"
Sam laughed. "I take it you had no interests involved?"
"Me?" Carlo expostulated. "If it was my guys messing around with Mischa's yacht, there woulda been a lot more than three bodies on the shore. Mischa's a fucking god around here, same as he always was. And we're still family, you and me, long as you don't test it too hard with this Smullen shit."
Sam nodded. He understood the point and the position he was putting Carlo in. But no matter how threadbare and inconvenient the ancient ties, he guessed his quartet was safe in the neighborhood. For the next week or two anyway. And with the new shooter-girl twins pacing the ramparts, they were better off without the arsenal. Especially with the idea that was taking shape in Sam's mind.
Chapter 39
Lydia surprised Sheri when she let Rudy drive Sam to the hospital for his next round of chemo. Until now, the older woman had kept a tight handle on the process, figuring, as she said, that if she didn't stand over him, Sam would slink out of the clinic untreated. The older couple had struck some sort of bargain, Sheri guessed, some agreement going back to the time Lydia rushed Sam to the hospital. Something involving guns naturally, this being the gun-toting Lydia, but apparently the wife didn't trust her husband to keep up his end. And small wonder, considering how she was maneuvering behind his back.
No sooner had the two men driven off, than Lydia was down in the bunker telling Sheri to help her shove aside the second set of shelves. The first set still stood where the so-called movers had left them when they came in and cleared out all of the weapons and a box or two of the filthy money. The women shifted the other shelves aside, and Lydia led the way through and up into the second house where the two of them had stashed what they could before the movers arrived. In the dusty, moldy living room of the right-hand bungalow, Sheri impatiently tapped her foot, while Lydia sorted through the weapons, matching up an automatic handgun with its clip. She offered it to Sheri, but for once, didn't force her.
Lydia picked up another handgun and pawed through the pile of ammunition. "Go get the car."
"More practice, or do we get to kill real people this time?" Sheri asked, letting Lydia know that she wasn't going to push her over forever.
Lydia laughed. "We're not killing anyone, shooter girl. We're following."
"But—"
"Go get the car. It'll take him at least ten minutes to sign into the clinic and then sneak out again."
So they were already sitting in the BMW outside the hospital, when Sam and Rudy came out, Rudy dissing the old guy over something. Sam snarled a reply that shut Rudy up, and then they climbed into Rudy's convertible and took off all the way up into the city to a Los Angeles County office building. The two men got out, hobbled inside, and emerged twenty minutes later with a rolled up set of official-looking blueprints.
Rudy drove off again west on surface streets. Sheri followed—it wasn't difficult with the dent in the convertible's back bumper—until they hit Western. Suddenly, the lady-like Lydia forgot herself and started swearing with a loud and vulgar imagination.
"Something the matter?" S
heri asked, alarmed.
"Those sonsabitches, you know where they're going?"
"Where?"
But Lydia just snarled and pointed ahead. She reached into the oversized purse she had taken to carrying, pulled out the handgun, flipped off the safety, and racked a bullet into the chamber.
"Get up right behind them," she told Sheri. "I want them to know we're here."
With the way Rudy started speeding along, it was easier said than done. At a traffic light, the convertible's automatic top arched up and settled back into its channel. Rudy's head appeared, a camera up to his eye. "What's going on?" Sheri asked, but Lydia was too close to boiling to answer. Then Sheri spotted the kaleidoscope of a building ahead on the left and blanched.
"Right on them," Lydia snapped. She crawled awkwardly between the front seats into the back and opened the window behind Sheri. Sheri brought the BMW up onto the convertible's bumper, but still Rudy didn't notice. He was weaving and pointing his camera, too pre-occupied to pay attention.
Sheri glanced over at the building and saw a trio of huge black men come running out, silver flashing in their hands. All of a sudden, Lydia was shouting and shooting, the gun exploding in the confinement of the car. All hell broke loose. Distant window glass shattered and sent the three thugs diving for cover. Sam and Rudy gawked back from the convertible at the BMW. The camera flew out of Rudy's hand. He pulled to his left, slammed on the brakes, and ran the convertible between the women and the building.
"Get the fuck out of here!" Sam shouted.
"Sonofabitch!" Lydia screamed out the back window behind Sheri. "Get out of the way!" Both cars speeding along the avenue, as Sheri hit the accelerator and Rudy kept up with her.
Behind them, the three shooters from the building must have recovered their nerve, because another shot shattered Rudy's windshield right over the steering wheel. He leaned out to steer and let Sheri get ahead of him, Lydia and Sam swearing viciously at each other across the interval. Sheri led the way down Western, then across town several miles on a side street. Lydia finally slumped, exhausted, into the seat behind her. So ten minutes later, when Sheri spotted a car-window glass company, she figured it was safe to pull in without endangering Sam's life.
In any case, the old man didn't seem to care. He leapt out of the car and hobbled up to Lydia's open window. "Give me the fucking gun," he swore, his hand in her face.
Lydia waved him away and kicked the gun safely under the front seat. "Go to hell. I thought you were trying to kill yourself."
"Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Sheri got out and fled into the office, where Rudy had already wisely retreated. "What the hell is going on?" her adrenalin demanded.
"You're asking me? How should I know? He's a fucking lunatic!"
"You think she's any better?" Whereupon they both dissolved into cascades of nervous laughter. They glanced out the window at Sam gesticulating by the car.
"Life in the old folks' home," Rudy murmured, and set them both off laughing again. Until the manager came back in and wondered what kind of rock would make a forty-five-caliber hole in a windshield.
As it happened, they had to wait for the car, so Sheri let Rudy figure out how to suggest that the older couple go ahead home and leave them here. At least an hour or two, although the manager had promised thirty minutes. With the bright new windshield installed, Sheri and Rudy randomly coasted the south side streets, desperate to land anywhere but South Gate. When Rudy suggested a drink, Sheri readily agreed and even let the bartender add a finger of gin to her tonic. They sat in the seedy, malodorous, but thankfully anonymous bar off Alameda and wondered aloud how much of this really had to do with them or even the Smullens. Neither of them getting a thing about aging, gracefully or not.
"How should I know what he's doing?" Rudy finally admitted. "He keeps talking about the unflinching stare of the camera and all that shit. As if he wants me to photograph him dying."
Sheri nodded along. "You heard Lydia. She thinks he's trying to kill himself."
"She doesn't get to him first," Rudy laughed, except that neither of them believed that part.
By the time they sucked down their relief and returned to the South Gate fortress, a limousine had pulled up outside. The still furious Sam and Lydia were coming out to meet the driver. Sam introduced the man to everyone as Jorge, Henry's favorite limo service owner. Jorge, touched by the reference and gesture, hesitated.
"Go ahead, Jorge," Sam told him. "We can take it."
"A certain person tell me to say, 'What the fuck is going on asshole?' You understand, Mister Sam, this is not me talking."
"Of course not."
"Also, I suppose to say, 'One more stunt like this, and you are on your own'. Again—"
"I get it."
"The other people, the black dudes, already mad enough at you, Mister Sam. You don't need to piss on them or tell them not to fuck with you. Everybody already know you one crazy motherfucker anyway. Or something like that."
"And that's it?"
"You have something for me?"
"Of course." Sam went into the house and came out with the roll of what looked to Sheri like architectural plans.
"Gracias," Jorge said. "Now I suppose to say two AM tomorrow night. You understand?"
"Sure, thanks."
"Understand what?" Sheri asked Rudy, as Jorge climbed into his limousine and backed out down the street.
"Hell if I know," Rudy said, then to Sam, "You want to tell us anything?"
Lydia chimed in with, "Why not Sam? Why not invent another bullshit fairytale for the children?" And with her fury still spitting all over them, she disappeared into the house.
Chapter 40
The utility service van slowed down in the quiet, dark, late night street and came to a stop in front of a manhole cover embedded in the tarmac. A pair of efficient workers in white uniforms leapt to the ground and put out reflective cones. A third brought out an iron hook and pulled open the cover. With a flashlight, he peered down into the opening. Then the trio donned hard hats with bright LED lamps on the crowns. The leader flopped a heavy canvas bag over his shoulder and started down into the bowels of the subterranean city. The second worker got his footing on the ladder, then reached up to take the automatic rifle the third was handing down to him. The third sat back in the rear door of the van, checked his watch, and lit a cigarette.
A block away, Sam sat with Lydia in the back seat of the BMW behind Rudy and waited. Sheri was driving. Sam would have given anything to ditch the two women, but after the fiasco of the day before, that wasn't happening. But at least he had body-searched his wife tonight and was reasonably sure she had come unarmed.
"What exactly is going on?" Lydia asked for the umpteenth time. At least she sounded in control of herself.
"They're going to blow the place up, and Rudy's going to photograph it in time for the morning news. And since everyone insisted on coming along, I can tell you it's not going to be pretty."
"What does that mean?" Sheri asked.
"It means you keep your eyes on the fucking road and do not panic. You ready?" he asked with a nudge at Rudy's back.
"I'm ready."
But Sam could tell he wasn't, not really. No one ever was. "Open the sun roof. Sheri's going to drive slowly past the scene, Rudy's going through the roof to shoot the photos, and you're all going to find out what a war photographer does for a living."
Another twenty minutes, and the two workers crawled out of the manhole, their white uniforms scuffed and filthy in the street lighting. The leader handed off his empty bag and stepped out into the middle of the street to signal. "Give it a few minutes," Sam said. They waited an eternity, while the van closed up and sped off. Then a rumble echoed in the night, followed by a muffled explosion.
"Go," Sam said. Rudy went up through the roof, and Sheri drove off, passing the building just as an enormous explosion shook the ground and started the colorful windows shattering one after another. Rudy g
ot it all, the spray of glass, the girders flying into the air, the flames leaping skyward. And the three flaming torches, running out into the parking lot screaming and beating at their clothes.
Sheri gasped, but did as she was told, crawled up to Western and took a left along the front. Lydia turned away from the catastrophe and stared down at her hands. Rudy's voice kept repeating over and over again "Fuck me," but the camera kept clicking. When they finally left the scene behind, Sheri drove off into the calm, dreamlike night. No one said a word, not even when they pulled into the distant all-night shop with the twelve-foot donut on the roof and sat to wait.
"I need some air," Lydia said and got out of the car.
"How long?" Sheri asked, but Sam was already on his cell phone, calling the loud-mouthed Jamie Crossfield with the scoop he had promised him.
"What?" the journalist asked out of a deep sleep.
"The Smullen place just got hit on Western. The police and fire fighters should be arriving any minute."
"How do you—"
"Don't be an asshole, Jamie. You're working this with a new photographer, name of Rudy Spavik."
"Never heard of him."
"He's a professional, I trained him myself. Get to the scene and call me, once your editor agrees to terms, including credentials. This isn't some cell-phone-snapping idiot, the guy's a genius. Same deal you always gave me."
"He's got film already?"
"Fucking Pulitzer."
So they hung around for another hour, drinking coffee and trying to eat donuts, without a ghost of an appetite among them. Finally, Sam gave up and crossed the empty parking lot to where Lydia stood, staring up the cross street.
"We should get back," he said. "They'll be waiting for the camera work."
"I never got it," Lydia said.
"Got what?"
"What happened to you. I never got any of it. No wonder you wanted to die."
"Don't give me that shit," Sam said. "Those people in that building weren't addressing Christmas cards. They were distributing cocaine and heroin. They were in the slow, agonizing death business, and now they're not."
Exposure Page 19
