by Avery Duff
CHAPTER 41
“They’s trouble in Glendale paradise.”
That was Reyes’ voice on the Yukon’s speaker.
“What variety of trouble?” Robert asked.
“Not exactly sure,” Reyes said.
A few hours after not rolling in the money, Robert had driven the long grade out of the high desert. The Yukon was rolling back toward LA when Reyes called.
“Trouble started this morning,” Reyes said on speaker. “Ms. Buttoned Up’s fighting with her spouse about something. Took it all the way out to the driveway, to her car. So she gets in, takes the kids with her, and drives off. Went to the car wash next, then Taco Bell, and then inside the liquor store and picked her up two bottles of champagne. Veuve Clicquot Brut, if I saw the label right.”
“Saw it where?” Robert asked.
“In the store. Man, out in the car, Felicia, she’s all over me about, ‘Who’s this bitch we followin’? You with her or what?’ And I can’t tell her nothin’, having my PI code to deal with, so naturally, I took a stretch inside the store.”
“Let me get this straight. Felicia is with you. In the car. Right now?”
“Right this second, no. I’m outside it, she’s inside, but last I looked, it’s her ride, so yeah, she’s with me.”
Erik mumbled, doped up, his eyes closed: “Hard to argue with that logic, Beach Lawyer.”
“Blow me, E-Rick,” Reyes said. “So Ms. Buttoned Up, she’s coming out the wine store, goes to put the bottles in her car, and one of her kids musta pissed her off. And, man, she went off. First on that one, then on the other one—looked like the second kid got his medicine on general principles.”
Erik again, to Robert: “Fights with her husband, loses temper with kids, call in the SWAT team.”
“Tell Oso Estúpido to shut it on up,” Reyes said.
Before Robert could say anything, Erik whispered: “Oso Estúpido—that’s pretty solid smack talk, right there.” Then he closed his eyes.
The pills talking. How many did he take?
Reyes said, “After she dressed down them two kids, looked to me like she changed her mind. Grabbed ’em both up and started hugging ’em, kissing ’em, crying. Unless that’s some kinda’ Slovak custom, I found her behavior noteworthy. Kind of noteworthy item you wanted to hear about, ¿verdad, abogado?”
Robert mulled it over. “Yeah, it is.”
“Then she goes home, and an hour or so later, she comin’ out the house, carrying them two bottles, gift wrapped. Dressed up now, and I mean lookin’ fine. White dress, matching pumps, that dark hair. Don’t get me started, ’cause seeing her? Felicia started in on me again.”
“Exactly where are you right now?”
“A convenience store, 210 East. Ms. Fox, she pumped some gas, went inside.”
Robert asked, “Where’s the 210 go?”
“Redlands, San Bernardino, Moreno Valley, Palm Springs.”
Robert recalled Boris’ Ford rental—from San Bernardino.
“I’ll meet you in San Berdoo. Probably take an hour or so.”
“How you know where she’s headed?” Reyes asked.
“Just hoping.”
After Reyes signed off, Erik sat up in his seat and asked, “Who was that?”
In the parking lot of San Manuel Casino, Robert watched Felicia’s late-model Camaro pull up beside the Yukon; Reyes got out, headed over. Erik still rode shotgun, but now he was downing a second casino-brewed double espresso, trying to fight through the opiates.
Sliding into the back seat, Reyes slammed the door.
“Yo, Roberto. Yo, Oso.”
“Don’t slam the door, dickhead!”
Erik’s opiates were definitely wearing off.
“Con calma, Oso, and welcome to San Bernardino. City on the move, home of the Inland Empire Sixty-Sixers. I am here, mi Oso, to break the case.”
Robert said, “Easy with the Chamber of Commerce pitch. El señor Polar has had a hard couple of days, so don’t wind him up.”
“Just sayin’ my cousin’s in right field for the Sixty-Sixers, plays salsa inside here on Tribute Night Thursdays. Pero lo respeto, amigo.”
“Tell me what’s up,” Robert said.
“San Berdoo, you were right. A subdivision street off Foothill Boulevard,” Reyes said. “That’s where Ms. Fox parks her car and walks alone into a two-story suburban spread. Looked exactly like the back lot at Warner Brothers, except bigger houses, bigger backyards.”
“So not at all like Warner Brothers,” Erik offered.
Reyes wasn’t going to let it go.
“What I mean, E-Rick, the street felt deserted like the back lot when they not shooting. Except for this house, maybe a couple others, they’s nobody around. But this crib where the lady went, they’s gonna throw down today, f’sure.”
A deserted subdivision street. Made sense to Robert. San Bernardino had been hit hard by the housing crisis and a shrinking economy.
“Throw down. By that you mean . . . ?” Robert asked.
By now, Felicia was laying on the Camaro’s horn.
“I could see the smoke, man, smell the party pig. It’s middle of the day, y’know, but everybody’s dressed up like they headed off to confession. Same time, two men in suits were standing at the front door, checking out Ms. Fox to make sure she’s on the list. You ask me, a fox like her always gets VIP’ed into my gig, but this get-together had a Sopranos vibe to it. ¿Comprendes?”
“Sí,” Robert said as Reyes slid out and slammed the door.
Rolling over to that San Bernardino subdivision with Erik, Robert looked around for the first time. To his right lay the arid, barren lands of the San Manuel Indian Reservation—big hills and limited development, from what Robert could see. After that, they passed another undeveloped area, Sand Canyon, drawing closer to Sharon Sloan’s party address.
Once inside the subdivision, Robert noticed that no roads ran in a straight line. Cul-de-sacs and looping roads reconnected where they’d started out, limiting ingress and egress. Fresh asphalt, new streetlights, and sculpted curbs.
As Robert wheeled another right, he saw parked cars ahead. Maybe fifty of them lined the street, like Reyes had said. Slowing down, he recognized Sharon’s car from the courthouse parking garage. Braked the SUV and saw a Garfield plush toy suctioned onto the rear window.
“That cat’s had a long run,” Robert said.
“The lads love him and Shamu. And that donkey from Shrek. What’s he called?”
“Donkey,” Robert said. “Sharon Sloan brings champagne to the party, middle of the day. Wedding? Engagement party? Baptism? Christening?”
“Whatever it is, sounded like her husband wasn’t too jazzed about her coming.”
Robert thought about Sharon arguing with her husband, going off on her kids.
“Maybe Sharon wasn’t jazzed about it, either,” Robert said.
He drove on, drew even with the house. When he did: motion. Two men—the two Reyes mentioned?—ran out the front door for the street. Robert floored the Yukon, squealed down one of those curved roads with no pedestrians in sight.
Not a cul-de-sac, it turned out, as Robert made the next intersection, blew a stop sign and cranked a right.
Erik checked the side mirror. “Mercedes SUV. They’re coming.” Unbuckling his harness, Erik leaned toward Robert, reached his left hand across the gearshift.
“What’re you doing?”
Robert made a hard left, saw that Mercedes in his rearview, gaining.
“Keep hauling ass, man!” Erik shouted, reaching over for the front of the driver’s seat.
Glancing down, Robert saw a compartment slide out of his seat—Erik’s secret compartment. Inside it, Erik’s Glock. Pulling it out, Erik heaved his body back to his seat, groaning in pain. Grabbing a clip from his glove compartment, Erik jammed it into his Glock.
Ahead of the Yukon, a dead end was coming up fast. Beyond that lay all that Indian reservation land. Whatever was in front of
him—no side streets in sight—Robert had no choice. Keep going straight.
“Sorry, dude—buckle up!” Robert shouted.
Erik had just snapped into his harness when the Yukon hit the sloping curb. The front end flew up, left the ground. Seconds later, the rear end landed, jolting them as the Yukon sped over the cracked concrete pad of an unbuilt dream house. Now they went over the edge, diving onto a fifty-yard hillside, Robert wrestling the wheel, keeping the car headed in a straight-enough line. The bush grille smashed aloe and yucca and ocotillo as the Yukon bucked its way to the bottom of the hill.
Robert carved a right in the hard-packed sand and floored it. Glancing through the sunroof, he saw the pursuer’s car above them, perpendicular to his own path, flying down the same hillside.
Erik said, “They’re airborne, man! Insane people! Kick it!”
They took off across the sand. Putting distance between them and the Mercedes until they hit a deep patch of soft sand and began slowing down. Robert tried to ease through it, pumping the gas, knowing better than to rev the engine.
“Four-wheel drive!” Erik shouted.
“Where!”
“Dashboard on your left!”
Robert turned a left-side dash knob to 4WD. Eased the gas, started moving them out of the sand, but the other car had gained on them. Erik’s hand rested on the door handle, Glock poised. Face gray with pain but ready to go.
The Mercedes hit that same sand, going so fast, it was only thirty yards behind them when its wheels churned to a stop.
Two guys in suits jumped out, but the Yukon had already grabbed four-wheeled traction and powered away.
In front of them, an elevated roadbed.
“We’re outta here,” Robert said, pointing ahead.
But on the rise to their left: two armed men emerged from the brush, running downhill.
“Who’s that?” Robert yelled, hitting that roadbed, leaning right into the turn.
“Ugly-ass blue windbreakers,” Erik said. “Gotta be the feds.”
Blocking the road ahead: flashing lights and unmarked sedans. The FBI.
He screeched the Yukon to a halt.
A young agent in one of those windbreakers approached. Robert rolled down his window. Heard a cocky young agent say: “Robert Worth. Erik Jacobson. Welcome, gentlemen.”
And Robert wondered, How’d he know my name?
CHAPTER 42
“If we’re not being arrested or held for questioning or being interviewed, what are we doing here?” Robert asked the agent in charge.
“I’m just curious,” she said.
The agent was Woods Pascoe, and her hawk nose and scowl made her meaner-looking than Robert would have liked. He and Erik had already been told—ordered?—to park the Yukon and had then been led inside this subdivision house, across the road, and not far from Sharon’s parked car.
At that point, Agent Pascoe told them to sit down on opposing living room couches while a premature raid was carried out down the road. Robert looked around at the used glasses and plates on the kitchen counter. Best guess: these agents had been camped out here conducting surveillance for quite a while.
“Who isn’t curious?” Robert answered. “But this is an interview, at a minimum, and neither I, nor my client, will answer any questions. Him, on advice of counsel. Me, because I know better.”
A federal statute governed talking to federal agents in this situation. Robert remembered that from his corporate practice—it didn’t matter what the FBI told them. If any answer or statement could be construed as misleading them, whoever did the misleading was looking at a felony.
Just ask Martha Stewart, he recalled. She did time for it.
“Let me be more specific,” Pascoe said. “Why are you here? Why were you driving by that particular house today?”
“Are we free to go?” Robert asked. “Or are we being arrested?”
“Do you know the men in the other car?”
“What other car?”
“The one chasing you,” Pascoe said.
Everything he wanted to say was wiseassed, so he held his tongue.
Pascoe said, “You aware you were driving on public lands, damaging protected habitat when you were stopped?”
Robert made an educated guess.
“That’s Indian land. Let the tribal council tell me if they have a problem with damaged weeds and sand. File federal charges, Agent Pascoe, or let us go.”
Cut us loose, he wanted to say, but didn’t want to sound like a criminal lawyer.
Back of his mind, Robert now knew the FBI had watched the Mercedes pursuing them and failed to stop it, arguably almost costing Erik and him their lives. The feds didn’t need that kind of publicity; nobody did. That insight didn’t come close to giving him an upper hand, but at this point, it was better than nothing.
Most important, in the hour they’d already been here, Pascoe hadn’t asked about their trip to Joshua Tree. That was a good thing, as Ms. Stewart liked to say, given that four dead bodies could be found up there at any moment.
“Let’s do this,” Robert said. “I’m going to take a chance and tell you about you because I don’t think I can mislead you about you.”
Pascoe shrugged. “Give it a shot.”
Robert said, “When the two of us got out of the car, one of your agents said, Robert Worth. Erik Jacobson. Welcome, gentlemen.”
“So you’re not gentlemen. So our agents have good manners. So what?”
“Manners or not, I’m wondering—how’d your agent already know my name?”
Agent Pascoe didn’t have an answer for that. Not one she was willing to share.
“My client, it’s his SUV,” Robert said. “You coulda run plates on it and ID’d him. But the Yukon’s windows are tinted. I never rolled ’em down, and I don’t own my client’s vehicle. So maybe you’ll tell me: How’d your agent know my name without asking me for it?”
“Which agent called you by name?”
“Doesn’t matter which one. Point is, there’s only one way you know my name—because you were already following someone who lives on this street or someone at this party. Your agents only know about me because you were following someone over on the Westside of LA. That’s the only way I ever show up on your radar. Would’ve been decent of you to give me a heads-up, tell me I was caught up with some San Bernardino crew all the way over on the Westside.”
Not long after that, Pascoe left the room. Through the window, Robert saw her chewing through that cocky agent who’d screwed up, calling him by name.
Waiting for Pascoe to return, Robert knew one and only one rule—keep your mouth shut. But these weren’t city cops like the ones he’d outmaneuvered in Santa Cruz. This was the FBI. If they wanted, they’d find out everything about him. About the trust. About his clients. All of it from the beginning of time.
If they ever looked into it, the FBI could put him in the desert at the same time those guys died. From his credit card buys, cell phone records, Internet history, they could prove he’d been there. Not that he was concerned about murder charges. Three of the dead men drowned, surely; their lungs would be filled with the same gunk Erik had hacked up on the riverbank. The other one was stabbed to death. Good luck finding that knife or Robert’s motive. Even so, Robert was concerned about his connection to drug money—because that’s what the trust’s money could be called. And a desert tie-in between him, his client, and drug money—that ran counter to his client’s interests.
Because of that, he decided to go against all his legal training and get the ball rolling. Show Pascoe some belly, too, and help his client in the process. When she walked in, he didn’t wait for questions.
“Why don’t you look into me, Agent Pascoe, if you haven’t already? I’m not a criminal or a complicit criminal-defense attorney. You asked why I’m here today, and so I’ll tell you.”
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
“I have a client who couldn’t consent to my talking to you even if s
he wanted me to.”
“And why might that be?”
“Because she’s a nine-year-old.” He let that sink in. “And her father, Matteo Famosa, was a victim of a hit and run over in Santa Monica last week. He’s in Saint John’s ICU right now, in real bad shape.”
Looked to him like Pascoe just wrote down Teo’s name.
“Take a look at the Santa Monica police report—the hit and run was intentional, but they have no leads I’m aware of. So my client’s father is touch and go, her mother left for parts unknown, and my client asked me to find out who’d want to hurt her daddy. That’s why I’m here. I’m here for my client, Delfina Famosa.”
“Got a date on that hit and run?” Pascoe asked.
Robert gave her the date, the time of night, and added, “Black Lexus SUV. Female driver, they’re saying. I hope that’s helpful.”
“Might be,” Pascoe said.
She went into the other room. Robert could see her huddled with another agent, going to a computer screen and pulling up what might’ve been surveillance tapes. Robert went to the window.
Outside on the street, only a couple of cars were still parked, and fifty yards away, he caught Sharon walking up the sidewalk toward her car. No doubt, she’d been interviewed by the agents and released. Wearing heels, dressed up and lookin’ fine, like Reyes had said. In the opposite direction, end of the street, several news vans had gathered, their greedy satellite dishes waiting to fill the empty air.
His eyes drifted again to Sharon, drawing closer to her car. For some reason, his mind began to shift from her and landed square on the two Famosa brothers. Not as men . . . as boys. Sitting on the porch of that rental house with Vincent. And he wondered, why would that be? Was there some connection between Sharon, Teo, and Carlos that he was missing? Or was it simply that his just-discovered link between Jesus Stone and the Famosa boys had edged out the other mental competition?
As he began to shift his focus onto Sharon again:
“Over here, Worth. Listen up.”
Behind him, Pascoe had returned to the room, and Robert joined her. Turned out, with the on-scene reporters, she’d decided to give Robert a heads-up on what would soon be public anyway: that these Draganovs had been part of a large-scale pot-growing operation in Northern California with interstate connections.
