by John Lansing
“How’d you do that?” Jack asked. “I would’ve been stuck talking to the guy all night.”
“It’s a necessary skill set. No one takes offense.” She gave him an appraising look, but not the kind used for a painting. “So, Mr. Bertolino, why don’t we take a shower and then get dirty?”
“I like the way you think.” He escorted Susan out onto Abbot Kinney, past the sea of paparazzi, excited voices shouting her name, flashing strobes playing off their faces, into the waiting limo.
* * *
Mercury vapor security lights cast a green pallor over the exposed parking lot at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. The treacly sweet smell of night-blooming jasmine wafted in from the garden that fronted the parking lot and left Toby Dirk feeling slightly nauseous. Or maybe his Venti house blend had set his teeth on edge. Or the accidental death of the Sanchez girl.
Visiting hours were almost over, and the lot was three-quarters empty. He had plenty of cover, he thought as a group of nurses finishing their shift all but ran to their cars and headed home.
Toby knew what Dr. Paul Brimley looked like; he was just doing his homework. Is that him? Toby wondered as he slid down in his black Jeep, his pulse accelerating a notch. No, shit, he thought, and then, yes, the revolving door spun again and, okay, there he is. The man himself.
Toby waited until the doors on the elevator closed, taking the doctor to the underground parking. He did a U-turn and waited curbside with a clear view back toward the pay booth, ready to pick up the doctor as he exited the lot.
The fucker drove up in his silver Lexus LS. Pretentious prick, Toby thought. Enjoy the ride, asshole. While you can.
The doctor exchanged a few pleasantries with the man in the booth, pulled out without signaling, and made a right-hand turn. Toby let the car take the lead by a half block before following in his wake onto the 134 freeway heading north. He knew where he was headed.
He liked the hunt more than the killing. The killing was a product of circumstance, of necessity, but the hunt, that was the sport. And he was good at it.
His mentor, Dewey, was an old surfer mystic who held on to his longboard as tightly as the belief system that he proselytized, but nobody seemed to mind. He was also a deer hunter and taught Toby how to shoot. When the sage man went on a hunt, he walked into the wild with a single bullet. Evened the playing field, he would say.
Dewey would field-dress the deer and hump out the carcass using winches and ropes no matter how far down country he drifted.
He taught Toby about patience, stillness, and meditation. About discovering the ancient trails the deer had followed for generations, understanding the pattern of behavior that had controlled the animal’s destiny for centuries. It was hardwired into their DNA.
As a result Toby was never surprised to see a buck with a full rack grazing next to the San Diego Freeway off Mulholland. Small herds still thrived in the middle of one of the largest cities on the planet.
Toby applied the same skill set he had learned at Dewey’s side to his own hunt. Men lived in patterns, close to home, in their comfort zone, and then ventured out in concentric circles. Once you understood a man’s patterns, hunting them and then killing them became a matter of course. As long as you didn’t set patterns yourself, and leave clues that the police could follow. The hunter becoming the hunted.
Toby never killed a man who didn’t need killing. His first was a drug rip-off gone bad. The dealer drew down on the Dirk brothers instead of handing over the dope and cash as instructed. Toby had to kill or be killed. Cost of doing business, outlaw business, and Toby didn’t lose any sleep over it.
The Sanchez girl had been an accident. She could also be his undoing if he wasn’t careful. It weighed heavily on him. Collateral damage he had planned to avoid. In time, the guilt would fade, Toby knew. But for now, it was a living hell.
Toby spaced out and almost missed the doctor’s Lexus as it merged left from the 134 onto 101 north. He knew the doctor was heading for the hills on top of Reseda Boulevard. This wasn’t the first time he’d followed the man home.
The prick never used his fucking signals, Toby thought as he pulled hard on the steering wheel, skidding across two lanes of traffic. He’d check the doctor’s pattern one last time. Tomorrow night he’d end the butcher’s life with as much mercy as the doc had shown his unborn son.
Eight
Day Three
“No prints on the cartridge,” Jack said as he snapped off his cell phone and stepped up to his regular booth at Hal’s Bar and Grill. Detective Nick Aprea was already seated across from Tommy Aronsohn, who was picking at the fries on his plate, having decimated his bloody cheeseburger.
Nick was as tall as Jack, but thicker, solidly muscled with a faded Marine tattoo on his beefy forearm, thick salt-and-pepper hair he wore brushed back, and a trace of childhood acne that rendered him more attractive to the feminine set. He had dark eyes that made bad men tell their secrets, and a smile that cut both ways.
Two cops and a lawyer who had spent most of his career working with cops. There was no question that the three men having lunch were law dogs.
Jack slid in next to Tommy, took a sip of his diet Coke, and chased it with a few of his own fries before continuing with Nick.
“A fragmented .22 entered the back of the kid’s skull. Two .22’s in Vegas’s chest. It was a tight grouping. One ended up in his heart, one banged off his spine and tore up his lung. The spine slug is too damaged for comparison, but the one to the heart is intact.”
“FYI, here’s the vic—I mean, scumbag’s résumé,” Nick said, sliding a folder containing Tomas Vegas’s mug shots, criminal history, and formidable rap sheet across the table to Jack. “Shred it when you’re done.”
“That was some solid shooting,” Tommy observed.
“Tell that to the Sanchez family,” Nick said tightly.
“From that distance . . .” Tommy said, finishing his thought undeterred.
It was a point well taken and not overlooked by the table.
“We’ll give him a medal when we run him to ground,” Jack added, needling his friend. He couldn’t help himself.
Nick looked at his tuna sandwich as if he was going to ask it a question and took a bite instead. “So, you’re not feeling the gang connection?” he asked Jack with his mouth full.
“It might be connected,” Jack said, “but how many bangers you heard of that fired from a sniper’s nest? They like to get up close and personal. It’s that machismo thing.”
No argument from Nick, who had butted heads with more than his share of street gangsters in Los Angeles, working narcotics with twenty-three years in.
“Why didn’t they take the dope?” Tommy asked.
“Good question,” Jack said. “Thoughts?”
“They didn’t know the drugs were there?” Tommy continued, spinning. “They were afraid of being ID’d?”
“The shooter knew enough to set up an ambush on Vegas’s delivery route,” Jack pointed out. “And you were right about the shooting being solid. No question that Vegas was the intended target.”
“It wasn’t about the drugs,” Nick said and emptied his second shot of Herradura Silver. “It was retribution. Some fuckin’ slight. He might have looked at someone sideways. Who knows with these jamokes?” But the question left him feeling uncomfortable. “Give the information to Gallina, let him run with it.”
“Man won’t change his colors,” Jack said. “He’s comfortable with the drive-by. Path of least resistance. He wants to put the case to bed and get a pat on the ass from the mayor.”
“The mayor’s that persuasion?” Tommy asked, eyes crinkling into a smile.
“Ask his wife.”
Nick barked a laugh.
“Do we know their supplier?” Jack asked.
“I’m thinking Sinaloa,” Nick said. “The Lenox g
ang has ties to the Mexican mafia who have ties to the cartel.”
“We know they’re not averse to sending a shooter if someone’s double-dipping,” Jack said, knowing he wasn’t educating Nick to the cartel’s behavior.
“Or on the payroll,” Tommy said, referring to a drug dealer turned informant being managed by the Feds.
“The shooting feels too clean,” Jack said. “They would’ve shredded him to make a statement. But it’s something to think about. I’ll put in a call to Kenny Ortega and see if the DEA had Vegas in their database, or on their radar screen.”
Kenny Ortega was an old friend and DEA agent Jack had a major history with. Jack, Kenny, and a CI named Mia had shut down a Colombian drug lord and put a ton of cocaine on the table.
Nick shot a glance through a six-foot-tall metal sculpture that divided the dining room from the bar, checked out a score on the wall-mounted television behind the bar. “Fuckin’ Lakers,” he said under his breath, and then with a wolf grin, “So, Jack, you nailed her, right?”
Jack played it straight, ignoring Nick’s knowing gaze and Tommy’s chuckle.
“Who?”
“Who, my ass. Come on, bro. . . .You made the eleven o’clock news, for crissakes. You were all over TMZ. Looked like a kid on prom night with the limo and that crazy hair and goofy grin. My wife replayed it for me in slo-mo three times. We had a good laugh. No doubt about it, my friend, you nailed her.”
“You were laughing with me, right?” he said, not smiling but not upset.
“You made my night.”
“I think your detecting skills are getting rusty.” He took a bite of another fry, letting the male camaraderie die down before he deflected their attention. “We should get a car on the Sanchez house. Get someone to watch young Juan.”
Nick waved his hand. “Call Gallina; it’s his case. Bring him up to speed, he can get it done.”
Jack glanced over at Tommy, who stifled a shit-eating grin and nodded his head in agreement.
“Fuck.” But Jack knew it was the best course of action. He couldn’t roam for too long. In the end, Gallina had to take credit for the case.
* * *
“Yah know, Bertolino, I see you, I get an instant pain in my gut,” Gallina said from a crouched position as he eyeballed the view of the Sanchez house from the alleged sniper’s nest. Gallina grunted, and his knees cracked as he stood up. The oldest young man Jack knew.
“It’s a gift,” Jack said.
“Don’t get your tighties in a wad, it’s not personal anymore. I see you, I know a clear-cut case is going to get complicated. My life’s complicated enough.”
Jack couldn’t argue the point.
“It’s a clean shot,” Gallina conceded. “No footprints?”
“If there were, with the rain and all, there was nothing left.”
“And you didn’t call me why?”
“You’re here now. I saved you a few steps.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Gallina said as he walked to the chain-link fence that spanned the rear of the property. He checked out the quiet of the suburban street beyond. “Anybody see anything?”
“Cruz knocked on all the doors . . . nothing unusual. The shooter had perfect cover.”
“If it was the shooter and not some neighborhood kid gunning for squirrel.”
Jack handed over the envelope with the shell casing and the photos documenting the exact location and time the evidence was discovered.
Gallina let out a labored sigh, too frustrated by the potential legal ramifications to go into it. “Prints?”
“Clean as far as I can tell.”
“I’ll get Malloy on it.”
“Can you run the slug through IBIS?” Jack asked, knowing the police were keeping a computer database of bullets used in crimes. The Integrated Ballistic Identification System. Every slug has an identifier, a personal mark created by the spin of the lead as it travels down the gun barrel. If there was a match with a bullet used in another crime, the case could be cracked wide open.
Gallina didn’t deem the request worthy of a response. An aggravated nod was all he could muster. “And I’ll have some of my men recanvass the block. Sometimes having a badge loosens lips,” he said pointedly.
“You’d think the mayor’s fifty grand would help.” But both men knew potential retribution from the Lenox Road gang would keep mouths cemented shut. Dead men couldn’t spend reward money, and the dollar amount wasn’t enough to bankroll a new life, in a different town, with a new identity.
Jack made a mental note to give Malloy a heads-up on the shell casing. “Can we get a black-and-white on the Sanchez house? Juan was pissing himself. Willing to take the fall rather than implicate Vegas. He’s got a plateful of reasons to be concerned.”
Both men paused as their attention was grabbed by a neighborhood girl struggling to light a votive candle with her mother’s Bic lighter. At last she added it to the growing shrine in front of the Sanchez residence. Mother and daughter genuflected, made the sign of the cross, clasped hands, and continued down the street.
“I’ll talk to Burns,” Gallina said. “Should be able to get it done.” Burns was the newly elected mayor’s city attorney and main fixer. “The last thing the mayor needs is having to explain to his constituency why he allowed more grief for the Sanchez family that he could’ve prevented.”
“Thanks.”
“And you buy Triola’s story about the time line of shots fired?”
“I walked him through it. It’s solid.”
“I’ll have Tompkins bring him in and take a statement.”
“Just a thought,” Jack said, trying to be politic, “but we should keep this on the QT.”
Gallina bristled at the implied team play. “Am I losing my mind here? There is no we in this equation, Jack. And if we don’t have anything else for the mayor’s press conference this afternoon, this is gonna lead the local news. Not to mention, a thank-you is in order, fuck you very much. I should run you in for evidence tampering in a murder investigation. Or have you forgotten in your retirement how the law operates?”
“No sense warning the shooter,” Jack said, reiterating this point.
“Yeah, whatever. Find me something else or all bets are off.”
Gallina started for his gray unmarked Crown Vic that every punk in the country could make as a police vehicle. He turned after keying the door open. “You know there are 175,000 white and gray late-model Sentras and Toyotas registered in L.A. County?”
Jack knew where Gallina was going. “Even if it wasn’t a drive-by, the occupants might have seen something.” If the driver had been ID’d, Jack knew, the cops could have whittled down the numbers.
“Shit out of luck for us,” Gallina said as he slid behind the wheel of the car, “but I’ll keep my guys on it. The mayor wants a resolution posthaste.” He slammed the door. End of conversation. Gallina’s tires squealed as he pulled away from the curb and powered past the crime scene.
That went worse than expected, Jack thought, praying he hadn’t made a big mistake. And Jack wasn’t a religious man.
* * *
“Jack Bertolino, isn’t she too young for you?” Jeannine said in a melodic, teasing voice that sounded like nails on a blackboard.
Jack fought the urge to hang up on his ex-wife, knowing he would just delay the inevitable. “What’re you talking about?” he asked, feigning ignorance, struggling to hide his irritation. It didn’t work and just egged Jeannine on.
“Really, Jack, my phone was ringing off the hook this morning. Susan Blake . . . ? She’s young enough to be your daughter.”
“I was on the job,” he said, not taking the bait, but knowing he’d already been filleted.
“Is that what they call it these days?” Droll.
“What can I do for you, Jeannine?”
> “Like father, like son.”
“Will you please get to the point?”
“Don’t bully me, Jack. I won’t put up with your condescension.”
“You called me, for the love of Christ, Jeannine, what can I help you with?”
“Your son has a girlfriend.”
Jack let out a sigh that couldn’t be taken back. “I’ll remember to congratulate him the next time we speak.”
“How long has it been?”
“I spoke with him yesterday.”
“Well, at least he answered your call.”
“How’s Jeremy?” Jack asked, taking a high dive into a dry pool.
“He told you, didn’t he?”
Jack didn’t want to throw Chris under the bus, but desperate times. . . . “He was upset. Didn’t want you caught in the middle of a misunderstanding.”
“Is that what it was? Well . . . your son won’t talk to me about baseball anymore.” She sounded truly aggrieved, and Jack could sympathize with her there. She had attended countless ball games through the years. “Really, the person who has been behind him all along. Remember how proud he was playing t-ball, Jack? He was only five and so determined. And then Little League. This has been his dream since forever, Jack.”
“So, what does he talk about?”
“That’s just it. He doesn’t. He doesn’t really engage at all. Not since Jeremy, the meddling fool, opened his big mouth. Chris has cut me out of his life.” Jeannine’s voice broke, and her pain was palpable. It stopped Jack in his tracks. The love they had shared in twenty years of marriage was a distant memory, only sparked on occasion by the love they both shared for their son.
“I think he’s afraid, Jack.”
That was a gut punch. Jack was the cause of his son’s pain.
“You’re right, with good cause,” he admitted. “But he’s working on it, his arm’s healed, and he’ll work it out. We raised a good kid, strong kid . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off.
