Caitlin nodded and sipped her coffee. “While you’re doing that, I’ll take a peek at the venue where Winter Court will be playing their inaugural show. That should help us refine a plan of attack.”
Tracking down Max, Dino’s tire-iron-swinging henchman, was harder than I expected. The record on Dino’s call log had given me a name: Dunsborough Security Solutions. Problem was, Google had never heard of it. No business listing, no reviews, nada. On a hunch, I hit up the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. The state bureau kept a database of interesting licenses, from alarm and locksmith companies to repo men and firearm instructors. No hacker needed: it was all public info, if you knew where to look.
I entered “Max Dunsborough” and struck tarnished gold: he’d been licensed as a private investigator. Past tense, since the state had stripped his license from him about two years ago for reasons undisclosed. His firearm permit? Same, right around the same time. Somebody had been a naughty boy. Something told me the lack of a legal license wouldn’t stop him from carrying a piece, though.
Caitlin took the car, intent on scoping out the concert hall, so Jennifer and I headed out to the sidewalk and flagged down a taxi to take us to the Civic Center district. We ended up on West Temple Street, greeted by burbling fountains, palm trees, and a long alabaster brick of a building frozen in the 1960s.
“The Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration,” Jennifer said, reading a plaque on our way to the front door. “You take me to the most excitin’ places.”
Slow electric fans pushed sluggish air around the lobby, while a bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln kept a tired eye on us. We followed the building directory to the records office, then waited in a shuffle-step line until one of the clerks had time to help us.
“We’re with Cowrie and Jet Family Law,” I said, offering my business card and a smile. He took the card out of polite obligation. We both knew he’d toss it in the trash can the second my back was turned, but that was fine. “We’re conducting a probate investigation. Could you pull a business registration from about two years ago, for a ‘Dunsborough Security Solutions’? Owner’s name was Max Dunsborough. I can provide his private investigator’s license number if you need it, and his firearm permit number.”
Twenty minutes later, we stepped out into the LA sunshine with a grainy photocopy of Max’s old business license.
“It’s amazing how much information is on the public record,” I told Jennifer. “You just have to know which bits you can find where, and which bits can unlock other bits.”
“Nice job, Columbo. So what’d that do for us, anyway?”
I brandished the photocopy, raising my free hand to hail a cab.
“Max isn’t the kind of guy who’ll let the lack of a PI license or a firearm permit keep him from doing business. His phone number, according to Dino’s call log, is still showing his old company name. I bet he’s still working out of the same address, too. If not, maybe we can talk to the landlord and get an idea where he moved to.”
The address was deep in the South Figueroa Corridor, and when we read it to the cabbie, he looked us over in the rearview mirror.
“You sure?”
“Drop us off two blocks away,” I told him, catching his tone. “Whichever direction you feel safer in.”
Jennifer leaned back in the shabby cloth bench seat and folded her arms. “Yep,” she murmured, “the most excitin’ places.”
“Hey,” I told her, “you could have gone with Caitlin.”
By the time the taxi dropped us off, leaving us at the edge of a weed-choked vacant lot, she was probably wishing she had. Hell, so was I. The air stank of diesel fumes, burning my sinuses, and the sun beat down on an urban wasteland so far off the beaten path it might not have been on any maps.
Jennifer took a pouch from the pocket of her artfully ripped jeans, carefully sliding out her favorite piece of jewelry: a polished razor blade dangling on a delicate silver chain. She clasped it around her neck and slipped the blade under her shirt.
When you worked with blood magic, it helped to be able to spill a lot of it, fast. More than one would-be challenger had learned the hard way that what didn’t kill Jennifer really did make her stronger.
“Now I’m ready,” she said.
Tract houses, yellow grass, the sounds of a cheap stereo playing from a parked Impala with the doors thrown open and the trunk lid up. Box fans stuffed in windows that didn’t fit, anything to keep the heat down in a neighborhood where nobody had central air. And eyes everywhere. I didn’t need a sixth sense to feel them. Eyes behind ragged window screens, eyes in a slow-moving rust-bucket sedan rumbling past us at five miles an hour. We were foreigners here, outsiders, and nobody knew what kind of trouble we might be bringing with us.
I kept my head up and my walk easy, hands open at my sides. Jennifer did the same. Keeping our body language a careful balance between “we’re not looking for a fight,” and “you don’t want to start one, either.”
Nobody did. We passed on through, a pair of silent pilgrims.
The street ended in the shadow of the Pasadena Freeway. A two-story roach motel crumbled away next to the overpass, flanked by a vacant lot and an old Shell station with the pumps gone and graffiti-plastered boards over the cashier’s booth. Max’s address had bars on the windows and a little gravel lot out front. The cars caught my eye: six of them, and two matched the black Lincolns we’d seen at Tanesha’s place. The others were a mix of pickup trucks and muscle cars, more expensive than anything we’d seen in this stretch of LA.
“That’s a bingo,” I said. “Looks like Dunsborough Security Solutions is unofficially still in business. And recruiting.”
Jennifer adjusted her necklace. “Let’s go say hi.”
16.
We took the long way around, skirting the boarded-up cashier’s booth of the gas station next door and scoping out Max’s lair from the side. Nobody outside, no visible sentries—but then again, it wasn’t like he was expecting any uninvited guests. A couple of side windows, but they were fitted with fifties-era scalloped glass, and it’d been about that long since anybody had cleaned them. All we could make out inside were lights and the occasional blur of movement.
“Six cars out front,” Jennifer said softly. “Could be a lot of guys in there. Lot more than six, anyhow.”
I crouched beside her, shadowed by the booth’s cobwebbed overhang, nothing but a patch of weeds and broken concrete for cover.
“Yeah, and Dino specifically told him to hire pros this time. Max was a punk, but if he’s any good at finding talent, this could be a problem.”
“Doubt he’s got talent like us,” she said. “How do you wanna play it? We could go in right now and clean house. Might save us some trouble later.”
I shook my head. “I want intel, not bodies. Too many unknowns to start kicking down doors. Besides, we don’t want to spook Dino, and killing his muscle’s gonna spook him hard. Let’s get a closer look.”
The only nice thing about scalloped glass was that it was equally useless from either direction. We jogged up alongside the building, shoes rustling through the weeds, crunching on shards of broken glass from a shattered bottle of beer. I crept close to the corner and peeked around back. No lookouts. Just a sturdy back door and an open window filled by a rattling box fan.
I crouch-walked to the window, keeping my head ducked and ears straining to hear over the fan’s shuddering whine. A snatch of familiar sound—Max’s voice—slipped out between the spinning plastic blades.
“You wouldn’t be responsible for the distribution,” he was telling someone, “just maintaining its security. The tour runs from here to Orlando. Keep everything under control, and you walk away with a first-class plane ticket and the second half of your fee, in cash. Sound good?”
I couldn’t make out the response. The voice was too far from the window, too soft, but laden with a thick accent. I dared a peek. Through the blur of the fan, two figures sat opposite each other at
a shabby office-surplus desk. One lanky, the other broad-shouldered and built like a bull on two legs.
“No,” Max replied, “they’re to be kept in the dark at all times. In a worst-case scenario, the musicians are disposable. Obviously, my employer would like the entire tour to go without incident.”
“Obviously,” came the response. Somewhere between amused and bored. “How many men under me?”
I tried to place the accent. Russian? Beside me, Jennifer’s brow furrowed.
“Ten,” Max said. “Half to provide security over the tour cases, half to handle distribution at each tour stop.”
“And they will do this…roadie business as well?”
“Right. That’s their cover. They’re fully trained. You won’t have to deal with any of it. Officially, you’d be in charge of tour security.”
“Good,” the Russian said. “I do not do grunt work.”
“Shit,” Jennifer hissed into my ear. “I think I know that guy.”
From the tone of her voice, I didn’t think she was expecting a happy reunion with an old friend, either. The Russian mumbled again, too low to hear over the fan, and I took another quick peek to see Max rising from his chair. I ducked back down as they shook hands.
“I’ll have the first half of your payment ready in the morning,” Max said.
“See that you do,” his guest replied, and heavy footsteps made the floorboards groan.
Jennifer tugged my sleeve. “C’mon,” she whispered, “gotta get a better look at him.”
We ran back to the neighboring lot, to the scant shelter of the derelict gas station, and crouched in the booth’s shadow to get an eye on the cars out front. The man who sauntered out the front door, ambling toward a snow-white F-350 pickup truck, was bigger than he’d looked through the blur of the window fan. Seven feet tall and chiseled from granite, wearing black jeans and a white tank top that showed off his pile-driver arms. His skin was a history drawn in prison ink, from the spiderweb tattoo on his elbow, to the constellation of stars on his shoulders, to the stylized, dripping dagger inked across one side of his neck. Razor nicks and old fish-belly white scars decorated his crudely shorn scalp.
“Dammit,” Jennifer whispered, “I hate bein’ right sometimes.”
His pickup rocked as he hopped in, slamming the door shut and firing up the engine.
“Fill me in,” I said.
“Calls himself Koschei,” she said. “Freelance muscle for hire, and he likes things messy. Couple years back, two dealers in Sacramento were feuding over turf. One hired Koschei. They found his rival’s body in about a dozen pieces.”
“Koschei cut him up?”
“Pulled him apart,” Jennifer said, “with his bare hands. Just started grabbing limbs and twisting ’til they tore right off. That’s his style. Up close, personal, and brutal as all hell.”
I shrugged. “So Max is hiring some scary guys. Doesn’t make ’em bulletproof.”
“That ain’t it. Koschei’s one of our kind, Danny. Word is, after studying Krav Maga and Muay Thai, he wanted something nastier. Found himself a teacher from the Forsaken Hand.”
That changed things. A lot. I tried to ignore the chill in my blood slicing through the LA heat. I’d just run up against a Hand sorcerer, an accountant named Sheldon who hadn’t looked like a threat until he beat me down from the other end of an open room with punches that split the air.
A good friend died that day, his body broken and bloody on the carpet right beside me. The memory was still raw, like poking an open sore.
“Caitlin and I must have made an impression on Max when we took down his last pack of thugs,” I said. “All right. It’s a new wrinkle, but we’ll deal with it. Forewarned is forearmed.”
I took out my phone. Jennifer glanced down as I pulled up my contacts list.
“Who ya callin’?”
“Caitlin,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to get taxi service out here.”
Caitlin had just finished her own recon trip. She picked us up in the Camaro and filled us in on the drive back to the Orchid Suites.
“The first concert is at the Hamilton Pavilion,” she said. “It’s a smaller venue, perhaps four hundred seats, and quite cozy. Winter Court isn’t exactly a household name. Their first album’s barely made a splash, and I can’t imagine they’d be getting a national tour if it wasn’t being financed with drug money.”
In the backseat, Jennifer frowned. “Heck of a step down from Big Rig.”
“A smart step down,” I said. “Using a major name like Curtis Rake meant more eyes, more heat, and more people in the mix every step of the way. No surprise he got caught. Now Dino’s doing what he should have done in the first place: moving his coke with a low-profile band. Cait, did you get a chance to peek backstage?”
“Of course I did. Not much room to maneuver, though. Narrow hallways, cinderblock walls, and concrete floors, a few modest dressing rooms. There’s a setup area just behind the main stage, connected to the outside by a pair of loading-bay doors. Tour buses and trucks assemble behind the auditorium; there’s a parking lot back there, tucked out of sight. Encircled by buildings on three sides and a partial chain-link fence on the fourth.”
“You,” I said, “are a natural at this.”
Her fingertips slid over the steering wheel, a pleased smile on her lips.
“That’s our spot then,” Jennifer said. “Coke goes in the roadie cases, roadie cases go on the tour bus. We jack ’em either right before the show or right after. Nobody’ll see a thing.”
“It’s what they’ll hear I’m worried about,” I told her. “If this turns into a shootout, we’ll have the LAPD on our heels. We’ve got to take Dino’s crew down fast, smooth and quiet. That won’t be easy. Jen, tell Caitlin about Koschei.”
Jennifer filled her in. Caitlin looked more intrigued than worried.
“A human who can put up a decent fight?” she asked. “Oh, I’ve got dibs on that one.”
We got to the hotel right around the same time Paolo arrived, trundling up in a dirty white Econoline panel van that spat black smoke from the soot-encrusted tailpipe. He jumped out and I walked over to shake his hand, trying to ignore the acrid smell of burning oil.
“My gear’s in back,” he said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “Gimme a hand? I brought the props and the lighting you asked for, too.”
“Sure thing. Paolo, you know Jennifer, right?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, ratcheting open the van’s side door. “Hey, pretty lady. And who’s—”
He turned and froze, seeing Caitlin at her side.
“And you met Caitlin.”
“Yeah,” he said, his smile as frozen as the rest of him. “Yeah, I remember. Uh, Dan? Sidebar?”
I wasn’t sure how he’d react to the unexpected reunion. The first and only time he’d met Caitlin, she’d been dolled up in a French maid’s outfit and serving drinks at a porn director’s McMansion. Later Paolo had seen the same news story as everybody else. The one about the house burning to the ground, and Cait’s old boss found torn into a few hundred bite-sized pieces.
I gestured for Caitlin and Jennifer to hang back and clambered into the van with Paolo. We found a spot to huddle amid the clutter of electronic gear, crates, and cardboard boxes, everything bound under heavy cotton tarps.
“She’s that chica from Kaufman’s place, right? What’s she doing here?”
I shrugged. “She’s the muscle on this job.”
He squinted at me. Then over his shoulder, back at her.
“She…don’t look like muscle.”
“You can’t always trust your eyes,” I told him. “C’mon, how long have you lived in Vegas? You should know that by now.”
We lugged his gear up to the room, and he set up his base camp on the table by the window. Paolo’s portable kit didn’t look anything different from what a respectable graphic designer might use: a sleek white MacBook, a pro-quality printer that took one page at a time, a digita
l camera, and an artist’s Wacom digital tablet with a screen the size of a TV. Then there were the boxes, five cardboard crates filled with samples of paper in a hundred different colors, textures, and weights, along with vials of glue and binding paste.
“So what am I working with?” he asked me. I handed him the raw materials for his masterpiece: that week’s issues of Variety and Billboard Magazine, hot off the newsstand. While Paolo finished setting up, I got a call from Pixie.
“Fish on a line,” she said.
“You got him?”
“I’m watching his activity from my laptop. He’s surfing some truly skeevy porn at the moment. He’s got a webcam hooked to his system, but you’re not paying me enough to turn it on right now.”
“Can you access his browser history?” I asked.
“Why? Are you looking for skeevy porn?”
“Industry sites, Pix. Need to know where he goes for professional news, and what search engine he uses. The pages he hits every day.”
“Sure, grab a pen, I’ll read ’em off to you.”
Alienating half the city had trapped Dino Costa in an information bubble. A bubble we were about to turn into a steel trap.
17.
Paolo worked late into the night, whipping up his Photoshop magic with one hand on his digital pad and the other on the keyboard, pausing for a quick photo shoot with Caitlin. Jennifer kept the job on target while I sat on the phone with Pixie, ferreting through Dino’s web browser and crafting the second leg of the con. At some point Caitlin ordered pizza and Cokes from some gourmet parlor down the street, filling the increasingly cramped room with the scent of hand-rolled dough, Italian herbs, and fresh, juicy sausage.
“That’s it,” Paolo finally said, pushing back his chair. The final touch, a pair of forged address labels with artfully copied postal marks, slid hot off the printer. He carefully affixed them to the doctored magazines.
The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella) Page 10
