"Listen, Shane, he's seventeen. We lifted his curfew. He's supposed to be growing up, managing his own life. There're lots of times he gets home late. We've gotta let him have some room."
"Honey, his phone is off and I'm scared to death he's gonna get dragged into this gang case you're working." He pointed to the curb. "Here's good."
She pulled over and stopped the car. He handed her a beer.
"Why are we having happy hour in my car?"
"House got bugged."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Then he told her what had happened, and how he had spent the evening.
She listened until he finished, then pulled the tab on her beer. It chirped loudly in the car. Alexa downed half the can at once. She drank beer like a guy. It was just one of the hundreds of little things Shane loved about his wife.
"Of course, you know if you'd let that happen, we'd all be out of the movie business by now," Alexa said. Shane nodded but said nothing.
"You report the shooting at the Pompadoro to the detectives downtown?" she asked.
"My cell isn't working too good in this weather," he hedged.
"Pretty pathetic, Shane."
"Okay, look. I've been kinda busy."
"What about Parelli, you think he's still alive, or is he L. A.'s newest one eighty-seven?"
"Far as I know, he's still breathing. But Alexa, we don't want to report it. I'm next to Valentine now. If this investigation goes wide and Dennis gets sucked in, my cover gets blown."
She nodded, then finally turned to face him. "Okay, I'll handle the chief. Don't report anything."
"Good."
"You have any idea who made that phone call at the restaurant, lured you outta the way?"
"I been trying to dope that out. Here's what I've come up with so far…"
Alexa remained silent.
"Since it was Emes in that work car, it had to be Amac's hit," Shane started, "one of his vatos probably cased the restaurant to position Valentine for the shooters. The scout could have been at Paradise Square and saw me when they took me to meet Amac. He calls Amac, and says I'm in there. Amac calls me to the phone to get me outta the way."
Alexa looked over at him and took another long swig on the beer. "I guess it could have gone down that way," she said. "So, if Amac is trying to clip Dennis Valentine, I guess we know what that tells us."
"Tells us Valentine's probably the one organizing the Crips and Bloods, and importing the White Dragon?"
"Could these two cases really be interrelated?" she speculated, her brow furrowed in doubt. "In police work, the first rule is never trust a coincidence."
"It's not a coincidence. Valentine moves to L. A. with his uncle's blessing. But do you really think they're only gonna do this showbiz deal, or is Dennis also gonna open up all the traditional mob rackets: drugs, guns, prostitution, porno?"
"He'd try and control everything," Alexa said.
"Right. So that means we gotta figure there's a good chance Valentine is behind your drug war. The timing makes sense. He shows up, Stone dies, Crips and Bloods unite to distribute heroin, then White Dragon samples hit the street. You said the DEA would have picked up a Mexican or Colombian smuggler, but they didn't, so maybe it's the Italians. So it follows that if the Emes know Valentine's supplying the black gangs with drugs, they would want to clip him."
Alexa finished her beer in three giant swallows, then crumpled the can and dropped it on the seat between them. "Welcome to my case."
"Hey, we're a great team. Even when we don't know what the fuck we're doing, we score."
"No shit… we're the best…" She smiled. "The rubber gun squad."
"Your call," Shane said. "I still work for you."
"I guess we go back to the house and put on a show for the bent noses."
They parked her car in the garage and went inside. Shane gave her another beer, took a second one for himself, then walked her around the house, silently pointing out the bugs. She nodded at each one, then pointed at him and mimed grinding a camera-show time.
She went to the front door, opened it, then slammed it loudly.
"Hi, honey. Where've you been?" Shane called out. Alexa walked into the living room.
"Those pricks downtown! I swear I'd like to shoot that fucking Filosiani," she said.
They both moved over to the bugged lamp in the living room. Alexa sat near it, but Shane started moving around the room to change the sound density on the mike. He'd heard tapes on hundreds of bugs and they were never clean recordings.
"Whatta you expect?" Shane said, roaming around, picking up a magazine, then dropping it. "Y'know it's all politics down there."
"Right. I'm busting my ass and all I'm getting is grief. Did you read that horrible article in yesterday's Times?" she asked.
"Yeah, saw it after you left. Pathetic."
"Sometimes I just want to pull the pin. Get the hell out, like you did," Alexa fumed.
Shane crossed to her and sat. "Listen, I met a guy tonight, a guy nobody in our Organized Crime Bureau even knows is in town."
"Do we need to discuss this now?" She sounded bored. "I'm really tired."
"Yeah, we do. Our OCB spotters shoulda picked him up at LAX, but he slipped in here. Your hotshot goomba squad missed him completely. He's a made guy from the East Coast."
"Just what I need. Now I gotta deal with some vacationing wiseguy while I got all this other shit to contend with."
"He's not on vacation. He's in town to set up a new business."
"Who is he?"
"If I tell you, you gotta promise it stays with us. I don't want this going to OCB."
Alexa remained silent. They both waited patiently, then Alexa cleared her throat. "Just tell me; let's not play this game."
So Shane gave her a glowing account of Dennis Valentine: telling her how smart he was, how careful, and how he was intending to take over IATSE. He ran through it point by point, leaving nothing out.
When he finished, Alexa was quiet for almost a minute. "If he tries to organize a labor union, I can promise, we'll shoot it down-fast!" she exclaimed.
"Honey, stop thinking like a cop for a minute. This is a chance to get rich. He offered me a piece of his scam. He'll make us partners. If he pulls it off, it's worth a fortune."
"You think he can really do that? Take over IATSE? How much can that be worth?" She sounded both amazed and skeptical at the same time. Alexa, like most cops, was a superb actor.
"What if, tomorrow, I handed you a hundred thousand in cash for just having a meeting with him and saying you're willing to think about it?"
"A hundred thousand to just think about it? You're kidding."
"I'm telling you, this guy is for real. He's serious."
"A hundred thousand for just talking to him?"
"All he wants now is for us to agree to agree. Once he starts cutting special deals with producers and studios, he's afraid some union guy will squawk. Then it could go to the D. A. for an investigation. If it does, all he wants is for you to put the right guy on it. A guy we can control."
"You're serious?"
"Honey, this is our little winery and restaurant in Mill Valley. This is all our dreams answered; a chance at a peaceful, normal life away from all that glass-house bullshit."
She finally said, "I'm not saying I'm absolutely gonna do it, but I think we should hear him out. Why don't you call him back and set something up?"
They left the room and went out to the pool; Franco trailed along behind them. They sat on the pool deck sofa and Shane put his arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, while Franco licked his paws, cleaned his face, and watched.
Shane's mind was lasering over his myriad of problems.
Chooch was now exposed to Valentine as well as to Amac. Shane was worried about that and was slowly becoming very depressed over it. He wished the boy would come home so he could hold and hug him. He wished he could send his son away to protective custody until this was all over.
Alexa picked up on his thoughts like a Gypsy mind reader.
"I know," she said softly. "I'm worried about him, too."
Chapter 25
OVER BUDGET
They left a new note for Chooch taped to the refrigerator, then got in the car and drove to the Valley.
Chief Filosiani's house in Studio City was a modest duplex on La Maida. Shane and Alexa pulled her Crown Vic into the driveway, exited, and found Filosiani waiting for them in the living room. He wore a red bathrobe over pajamas, and had fleece-lined slippers on his feet. He whispered that his wife, Mary, was asleep in the bedroom as he led them into the den.
The chief's den was wall-to-ceiling clutter and way too small to accommodate his vast police reference library. The Day-Glo Dago had run out of space and overflow volumes were stacked everywhere. Big, blue LAPD binders, filled with procedural manuals from other departments, were piled on the floor waiting for his determination as to whether they contained anything worth implementing in L. A. He had one bookshelf packed with ten fat volumes of the Psychological Pathology of Homicide, another with volumes on ballistics and ESD. One entire wall was devoted to the emerging field of DNA and forensic investigations.
The chief cleared some space on the small four-foot-long sofa, and Shane and Alexa squeezed onto it together, as Filosiani lowered himself into a creaking Early American rocker. "You said on the phone it was important," he probed.
Shane and Alexa filled him in. When they got to the part about the foiled La Eme drive-by on Dennis Valentine, he furrowed his brow.
"I don't like," he said. "Means Valente's already got more traction here than we realized." He slowly leaned forward. "Do you realize how lucky we are you stumbled onto him when you did? You're on the inside now, with a real shot at busting his operation."
"That's why we came over," Alexa said. "This film scam of Shane's is good. Valentine told him tonight that he wants me to be his department mole. We've got to keep the sting operation going, but we're out of money."
"I just gave you a hundred thousand, then I get an e-mail from you this afternoon that said you put in another ten and needed forty more. I authorized it and had it transferred. What happened to all that?"
"Gone," Shane said.
"Gone?" He was furrowing his brow. "A hundred and fifty thousand in one day?"
"Well, actually, it's more like two days, but yeah. Beyond that, I've just made a verbal deal with Mike Fallon's agent. It ain't cheap, but the good news there is I don't have to pay him if the film doesn't go past the second week of preproduction. We went into preproduction today, so we've got thirteen days left. I also cut a deal with a director named Paul Lubick. Nicky and I did it over the phone with his agent this afternoon. Lubick's not cheap, either. The guy has more assistants than a NATO commander."
"Shane, need I remind you that we're not gonna ever make this movie?" Filosiani said.
"You can remind me all you want, Chief, but as long as these guys don't know it, they're gonna set up to do things the way they always do."
"How much?"
"Well, at least a hundred more to start with. I'll go back to Lubick's agent and try to cut a more front-end-friendly step-deal on a shorter clock with a trigger clause."
"What the fuck is that?" Filosiani growled, losing his impish smile.
"It's movie talk. Means we pay less now but he has a trigger date that obligates us to the whole amount in a few weeks. Normally he wouldn't get the full amount until completion of the principal photography. I'm planning to set up the meeting between Alexa and Valentine tomorrow. He's talking about giving her a hundred thousand in earnest money. We might as well let Valentine finance some of this sting himself; let it go toward our overhead and expenses. That gets us up to three hundred and fifty thousand. I'll try and move this along as fast as I can, get the RICO case made before this movie breaks us. But these guys and their agents are tough. The minute I stop paying, they stop playing, and once that happens, Dennis is gonna spot this for what it is. Then everything we've spent to date gets flushed with no case getting filed."
"Okay… okay, I gotcha. I'll keep the money coming. But Christ on crutches, Shane, wrap it up quick, will ya?" "I'll try."
They left Filosiani and drove back to North Chalon Road. When they arrived, it was after midnight. Chooch's Jeep was still not there. The note was still on the fridge. Shane called the boy's cell phone again, but got the same out-of-area recording.
"Maybe he left a message for us on the Venice machine," Alexa suggested.
Shane called the house and hit their retrieval code. There were two messages from Nora Bishop to Alexa, asking her to call about the bridal shower Alexa was throwing tomorrow. Alexa had changed the address to North Chalon Road, and Nora wanted her to fax a map to all the out-of-town friends. Then, they heard Chooch's voice…
"Hi, Mom and Dad. Look, I won't be coming home tonight… maybe not for a few more days. I know you're g onna be worried and upset with me, but I gotta take care of something. I promise you I'm safe. I'll check in and leave messages every day so you'll know I'm okay. This is very important to me. Talk to ya later. I love you guys… Bye."
After they hung up, Shane and Alexa stood in the kitchen by the phone, staring at the floor. Both of them were flooded with emotions.
"He'll be okay," Alexa finally said. But Shane was too upset to even answer.
Chapter 26
PREPRODUCTION
Shane slept badly.
Every time a car passed the house, he would wake up thinking it was Chooch's. Twice, he got up to check the garage. During one of these occasions he went outside to the pool, away from the listening devices, and attempted to reach Amac on the cell phone, calling the same number Chooch had given him, leaving a message with a Chicano who barely spoke English. He tried to go back to bed.
At two-thirty in the morning his cell phone rang. Shane snatched it up, swinging his feet out of bed, wide awake in less than two seconds. Alexa was also rolling into a sitting position.
"Yeah," Shane said.
"Scully." It was Amac.
He got out of bed and headed back out onto the pool deck, away from Valentine's bugs. Alexa grabbed a robe and followed.
Shane could hear folklOrica music in the background. "Chooch is missing," he said once he was away from the house.
"Just a minute," Amac said. Shane heard a door close, then the sound of the party disappeared and Amac came back on. "Orale. He called me."
"Where is he?"
"He wouldn't say. You remember Delfina Delgado?"
"Who?"
"You met her, homes… when you came to mi tia's house. The beautiful chavala with the long black hair." "Yeah, yeah, I remember… your niece."
"Well, kinda. She's in my family. Mi Ma's her comadre. It's like a godmother. Delfina is my aunt's brother's daughter, whatever that is… my second cousin or something."
"What about her?"
"Hey, Scully, she's Chooch's jiana. He's in love with her. He's been seeing Delfina for almost two years now. You ain't heard about this?"
"He never told me," Shane said softly.
"Delfina disappeared two days ago. We been looking all over for her. Don't know where she is. I can't give it much time 'cause I got this pleito with the mayates to run. When Chooch couldn't reach her, he called me. Now he's out looking for her."
That was the missing piece. "Has Delfina been kidnapped?" Shane asked.
"If the mayates know about her, then maybe, but you want my guess… I don't think so."
"Then what? Where is she?"
"I don't know, but you gotta let go of Chooch, ese. Asi es, ast sera. This is how it is, how it's going to be."
"I can't just do nothing."
"What you gonna do, man? Get in your carrucha an' drive all around up in The Hills, looking? He'll come home."
"Have you checked your aunt's house in Lomas?"
"My aunt is back in Cuernavaca. Estados Unidos was not her thing. Maybe it's not for any of u
s. We'll have to wait and see. If I hear from Chooch, I'll call you try and get him to go home."
"Thanks, Amac… and thanks for the heads-up in that restaurant."
"Don't know what you talkin' about, homes…" But there was a smile in his voice. Then he hung up.
"What?" Alexa said.
"Chooch has a girlfriend. I met her when I went up to talk to Amac two years ago. She's Amac's second cousin, a beautiful girl with long black hair. She's missing and it seems Chooch is out trying to find her."
Alexa reached out and took Shane's hand. "You gotta admit, that's exactly what you'd be doing."
The remainder of the night was strangely more restful. Maybe it helped knowing that Chooch had not signed up to be a soldier in Amac's pleito.
Shane woke early, with a headache. He showered for a long time, standing in the strong, hot spray of the drug dealer's luxuriously tiled stall. The hot water relaxed his neck muscles and eased his headache. When he finished, he looked for a towel. Not finding one, he used Alexa's hair dryer instead. Then Shane slicked his hair back with his fingers, put on clean underwear with yesterday's clothes, and left. He didn't wake Alexa because it was the first time she had been able to sleep in two days.
Shane drove to Hollywood General Studios and waved as he pulled past his buddy, the retired motor cop. He had to park in a guest spot in front of the administration building because a Jag Roadster occupied his newly assigned parking space.
When he arrived at Cine-Roma Productions, he ran into a firestorm of activity. People he had never seen before were milling about in the halls, running in and out of Nicky Marcella's office, which now had a piece of paper stuck to the door that read: DIRECTOR.
Nicky was sitting on the couch and Paul Lubick was behind the desk. The director was a tall, fortyish man with a beefy build and a flushed complexion. There was too much tangled yellow-blond hair matting his large head and it had been fastened into a ponytail with a thick rubber band. He was wearing a safari vest with all kinds of shit in the pockets. Lens finders and fog filters dangled from chains around his neck; on his feet, he wore an ultrahip pair of lace-up Doc Martens.
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