Cold Hit Read online

  Franco was stretching out a welcoming paw, so Delfina handed the marmalade cat over. As soon as I took him, he started purring and nuzzling my chest. It’s nice to be wanted.

  “Guess what?” Delfina said. “This afternoon we got a call from Pete Carroll. He wants Chooch to come to the school next week and meet all the coaches. It’s an official visit. Chooch thinks it means they’re going to offer him a full scholarship. If he wants to go there, he needs to sign a letter of intent by February fourth.

  “That’s great!” I said, happy that it was finally working out.

  “He’s in his room calling the world,” she laughed.

  I walked into the makeshift garage bedroom. Chooch hung up the phone and turned as I entered.

  “Dad, it’s so cool you came home tonight.” He beamed. “Mom said you were undercover for a few days. You gotta hear what just happened!” One sentence fell on top of the next.

  “Del just told me.”

  “Is this sweet?” A grin spread, lighting his handsome face.

  “You bet it is.”

  I put Franco down and sat on the foot of Chooch’s bed as he spun his chair around to face me.

  “Y’know, Dad, I’ve been going over what you said, and you getting hurt and going in the hospital sorta put a lot of this in perspective. I think you were right about most of what you said.”

  “I was?”

  “Yeah, about using football so people would think I was special. But that’s only part of it.”

  He paused and furrowed his brow. I knew he was coming to an important realization so I sat back and waited.

  “When I was a kid growing up with Sandy, it wasn’t like she was even my mother,” he finally said. “She was always off doing whatever, and she had me stashed at one boarding school or another, always safely out of the way, so I wouldn’t judge her. But I was so young I didn’t understand it was about her. I thought it was about me. I thought I wasn’t important enough to her.”

  I understood what he was saying. When I first met Sandy Sandoval in the late eighties, she was a high-priced L.A. call girl who I had eventually recruited as a civilian undercover to work high-profile criminals. She was Hispanic, and so beautiful that people often turned to stare whenever she entered a room. Because of her looks, she had no trouble getting my criminal targets to confide in her once she had them in bed. In return for any information that led to a bust, she would collect an amount from LAPD equal to half of the money we had spent trying to catch that particular criminal in the preceding year. It often came to several hundred thousand dollars. She was making ten times more as a UC than she ever had as a call girl. Sandy and I only made love one time, but without my knowing it, that union had produced Chooch. For the first fifteen years of his life, before I knew he was mine, Sandy had more or less ditched him, putting him in expensive boarding schools so he wouldn’t be exposed to her line of work. The day she died three years ago, she told me that I was his father. Chooch grew up feeling angry and rejected, much as I had. This history had produced insecurities in him, and that’s what he was talking about.

  “So I guess in some ways you’re right,” he continued. “Having everybody saying I’m good at football, well, it just felt real good to me, y’know?”

  “Son, I know. I’ve been there.”

  “But I’ve been acting like a total jerk. And you’re absolutely right about my Montebello game. It was lousy. Who do I think I’m kidding, saying Terrell Bell has rotten footwork and a bad arm? The guy is great, and I’m scared he’ll beat me out if he goes to USC. With two Heisman-winning quarterbacks in five years, they’re really loaded at that position. Terrell’s not my problem. I’m my problem. If I want to succeed, all I have to do is make myself better. I’ve got a lot to learn from these other guys, and if I get the scholarship, I’m gonna go in with the right attitude. I’m gonna be a team player, ’cause I really love this game, Dad, and it does come from the inside.”

  “That’s the right way to look at it, son.” I was incredibly proud of him.

  “You and Alexa are invited on Sunday of my weekend visit. They’re gonna take us around the athletic department to meet the staff and show us the facilities.”

  “I’ll be there.” I only hoped I’d be alive to keep the promise.

  Alexa came home at eight o’clock and was surprised to find me sitting in the backyard. She walked outside shaking her head slightly.

  “Is this smart?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Honey, I think you need to leave,” she said.

  “Not exactly the response I was hoping for.”

  I stood up and kissed her. Her arms went around me, and for a moment we clung to each other.

  “Since I don’t trust the phones, I figured I’d tell you this in person,” I said.

  She held my hand and waited.

  “I need you to get a search team up to New Melones Lake in Central California and drag the bottom for Calvin Lerner’s body. I think he may be down there, wired to an anchor. If he is, and if he was shot in the head like Davide Andrazack, then maybe we can tie the bullet to Sammy’s five-point-four-five automatic.”

  “Drag the whole lake. That’s gonna cost a fortune. There’s over a hundred miles of waterfront.”

  “The Petrovitches have a house up there. Get somebody to check with the real estate tax board and find out where it is. Then start somewhere near the house. These guys are so arrogant, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just threw Lerner’s body off the end of their dock.”

  She nodded, then said, “I’m trying to get you the warrant, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be what you want. It’ll be pretty narrow. The judge wrote it for tax records only, and limited it to Patriot Petroleum, which is one of their companies like you thought.”

  “Sammy won’t have an old KGB assassination pistol hidden in his office. If it’s anywhere, it’s in his house.”

  “I know, but I set this up using your gas tax idea. The judge wouldn’t write a warrant on their houses. This isn’t like a FISA court where we can get whatever we want. I had to twist Judge Bennett’s arm to even get it at all. I hardly had any PC.” Alexa pulled her hand away. “So far the only address we have for the damn company is a post office box in Reseda. Maybe the fucking gun is locked up there.” She was getting frustrated.

  “Okay, okay. Don’t get hot. I’ll get an address for the warrant.”

  “I’m not hot, I’m worried because I think I know what you’re up to.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You don’t really give a shit about these tax records. It’s a nothing financial crime, and at worst the Petrovitches will only get a lousy eighteen months. You’re not going through all this just to drop a pound and a half on them. Since finding the gun is now pretty much of a long shot, I think you’re gonna try and piss this goon off.”

  “How can you say that?” I said, trying to look innocent.

  “You’re gonna roll over there, insult this lunatic, then lure him into an ambush and try to take him down for assault on a police officer. Once he’s in custody, you’re hoping to roll him on his brother. That’s the dumb-ass plan, right?”

  I decided if I wanted to get laid tonight, I better change the subject. So I brought up Zack.

  “I don’t want to talk about him right now,” Alexa said.

  “I think he’s been following me.”

  “Great. It’s not enough you’re flipping off a leaking stick of nitro like Sammy P, but now your number one suspect for a multiple homicide is also after you. By the way, what are you doing for laughs?” She was frustrated with me, but I wasn’t finished.

  “Look, Alexa, to be safe, I think we need to move everybody out of here. Take a hotel room down by the beach.”

  “We can’t afford to do that.”

  “We can’t afford not to.” I took her hand again and held it.

  “Sometimes I get so weary of this.” Her voice was softer now, almost pleading. “When I�
��m not battling with Tony and my crime stats, I’m worrying about you. I know you’re doing what you feel you have to, but I wish you’d just take a job on the sixth floor so I could stop looking at my watch and wondering why you haven’t called. I can’t change how I feel.”

  I sang Billy Joel’s song to her, warbling the tune comically off-key: “I want you just the way you are.”

  “Great.” She smiled. “I wish you weren’t such an impossible hard head.” Then she put her head on my shoulder.

  So I led her into the house.

  We closed the bedroom door and slowly started to undress. Looking at Alexa, I couldn’t help but think how my wife seemed more beautiful and incredible to me with each passing day. If Zack or someone else took advantage of my family, would I be able to go on? Would I have the courage to keep fighting if either she or Chooch were in serious jeopardy? I suddenly understood the wisdom of the Russian mafia rule to never marry or have children. My wife and son gave me strength and emotional stability, but they also made me extremely vulnerable.

  I needed to get my family relocated tonight.

  Alexa and I lay on the bed and caressed each other for a long time. I felt her breath on my neck, her hands on my back.

  She turned her face up to mine and kissed me.

  “Darling,” she said. “I’m so afraid. Sometimes I think if I lost you, I couldn’t go on.” Voicing my exact fears.

  I knew how vulnerable we both were to misadventure and my heart suddenly raced. I vowed to protect us, even at the expense of my own life.

  We began to make love, slowly taking each other higher and further than we had ever been before. As we coupled, the intense pleasure of desire, primal and pure, washed over us. I wanted to be closer than our bodies would allow. It was almost as if I needed to be her, to wear her skin as my own. In this act of love, the longing and closeness we shared made me crave even more.

  Afterwards, we lay on the bed listening to the innocent sounds of our home. The kids were laughing about something in the living room. The TV was blaring. The normalcy of all this was a bitter contrast to my lingering fears.

  “I think you’re right. We need to get out of this house,” Alexa said, sitting up and looking at me. “I don’t trust it here right now.”

  We dressed and went out to tell the kids to pack; that we were spending the night somewhere else.

  The phone rang. I caught it on the fifth one. It was Roger Broadway. He told me that the Financial Crimes Division had just called him back with troubling news on their reactivated investigation into Americypher. Ten months ago, Calvin Lerner’s widow had sold controlling interest in the company to an offshore Bahamian corporation called Washington Industries. I wondered what that meant, but told Roger I’d call him back once I was resettled.

  As I was locking the house five minutes later, Alexa slid into her department slick-back with Franco purring on the seat beside her. Chooch and Del piled into his Jeep. They pulled both vehicles out, headed for The Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa Monica.

  I followed half a block behind them in my Acura, on the lookout for gray sedans with government plates, while also scanning the road for any glimpse of a white Econoline van.

  52

  Kenneth Broadway was a broad-shouldered, fifty-year-old man with ebony skin, and the deepest-set eyes I’d ever seen. He had a megawatt smile that could instantly light his semi-serious face. He was standing next to his nephew, Roger Broadway. Emdee Perry was facing them, his back to a two-story building located across from the Coast Highway in Long Beach. I pulled in, got out, and was introduced.

  It was ten o’clock the next morning.

  We were a block from the ocean, a mile northwest of the old Long Beach Naval Yard. The empty, warehouse-sized building we were parked in front of was dominated by a giant, two-story-high, rooftop cutout of a slightly cartoonish blonde of extraordinary proportions. She was a luscious creature with overdone curves, wearing platform heels and a painted-on black miniskirt. Large corny lettering proclaimed our location as the West Coast factory for Lilli’s Desert-Style Dresses.

  “Lilli is Butch Lilli. Human dirt,” Roger Broadway said. “He’s currently doing a nickel in Soledad. This was his front. We took it down in two thousand three when I was still in Narcotics. The guy moved a shitload a flake outta here. The upstairs is nothing but a big room full of long sewing tables. He made the brasseros who bagged his dope in cellophane twists work in their undies, so he’d be sure they couldn’t steal any powder.”

  Kenny boasted, “I put more cameras and mikes in this joint than they’ve got over at NBC Burbank.”

  Emdee Perry had the key from the real estate agent and he opened up. We walked into a dim, musty, downstairs corridor decorated with cheap wood paneling and years of petrified rat shit.

  “If you guys wanta use this place, we’ll need to turn the electricity back on so you’ll have enough light to get a video image,” Kenny said, as he led us up the stairs. “I kept meaning to come over here and pull the electronics out, but I did this job off the books for Rog, so I had to be cool about it. It’s all outdated anyway. We don’t use fiber-optic cable anymore. It’s voice-activated radio transmitters now. This stuff still works, but it’s three generations past prime.”

  We entered a large open area on the second floor. Sewing tables stretched the entire length of the room—perfect for making dresses or bagging cocaine.

  “Uncle Ken put five cameras in here,” Broadway said. “It was great, because Butch Lilli loved to bring his dirtbag dealers up and show them the operation. Ran the sting for six months before we took the joint down. Forty coka-mokes hit the lockup.”

  “See if you can find a camera,” Kenny said, with a tinge of professional pride. “I’ll give ya a hint. It’s right there.” He pointed at a place on the wall.

  I walked over and studied the spot where he was pointing, but couldn’t find it. Then he came over and showed me where a piece of plaster had been chipped four feet up from the baseboard.

  “That little dot there,” he said, proudly.

  “That’s a camera?” I could barely see the pinhole.

  Kenneth nodded. “Fiber-optic line on this bug runs down a channel we cut in this concrete column here, then behind that baseboard, down the air shaft, out into the lot. When we did this sting, Roger parked one of the ESD minivans in the culvert forty yards to the east, loaded brush all over the thing, and then plugged everything into monitors we put in the van. Television City.”

  We walked the room. “This is gonna work good,” Perry said, studying the layout. “It sits out here all alone. The Odessa bandas will like it. If I was gonna stomp your gonads, Shane, this is where I’d do it.”

  “I’m beginning to have second thoughts,” I said, a cold chill descending. “I’m not doing this unless we get some decent backup.”

  “No problemo, Joe Bob.” Then Emdee shot me a yellow-toothed smile. “Once we set that up, all ya gotta do is get Sammy out here and get him talkin’ before he kills ya.”

  “What makes you so sure he’s gonna chase me down here?” I asked.

  “Sammy’s got no impulse control,” Emdee explained. “He’s a gag reflex with balls. We got ten pages of withdrawn complaints to prove it. Piss him off and he’ll come after ya. No insult goes unpunished. It’s his thing.”

  I looked around. “This place is pretty deserted. If he’s gonna fall for this, it’s gotta look like I’m here to meet someone. I can’t just come to an abandoned building way out in butt-fuck-nowhere, and wait around to get captured. He’ll know it’s a setup. One of you guys is gonna have to be up here waiting so it looks like we’re having a meet.”

  “I’d do it, but my back’s been acting up.” Broadway grinned.

  “You ain’t gonna skip out that easy,” Perry said.

  “Okay, what then?” Broadway said. “Draw straws? Eenie-meenie-miny-mo? If we measure dicks you know you lose.”

  “Ahhh, yes.” Perry grinned. “The old African di
ck myth.” He pulled a coin out of his pocket. “Call it,” he said, and flipped.

  “Tails,” Broadway said as the coin hit the floor, and spun for a moment before lying down.

  Tails.

  “Okay, Emdee’s in here waiting for me.” I looked at Broadway. “You’re in the van outside with whatever backup we can score this afternoon. If Rowdy and I look like we’re about to get harp lessons, you gotta make some big-ass trouble, man.”

  “I got your six,” Roger assured me.

  I looked over at Perry. “Let’s stash some guns up here, just in case.”

  We both pulled our nines and started looking for a place to hide them. I found a spot under one of the sewing tables near the cameras, and taped up my Beretta using a roll of silver duct tape I’d brought in my briefcase. Perry had a big. 357 Desert Eagle that he taped behind a heater six feet away.

  We all went downstairs and watched as Kenneth Broadway reactivated the bugs. He turned on each camera and checked it on a portable monitor for picture and sound, then ran some fresh cable from the building outlet through the brush to the spot in a gully where one of his NSA surveillance vans was parked. Inside the vehicle was a bank of monitors.

  After two hours, we were ready to go.

  I unfolded the warrant that Alexa had procured, and showed it around. “Open warrant for the tax records on Patriot Petroleum once we find where the damn company is located. They’re not listed, so we’re checking with the IRS. We can forget looking for the gun ’cause he won’t have it at his office. I’ll just raise as much hell as I can and blow outta there.”

  “Whatever you do, make sure you get all the way down here,” Broadway cautioned me. “I wish this place was closer, but tactically this is the best location that was prewired and fit all the other parameters. If they pick you up before you make it here, you’re pretty much up on The Wall.”

  The Wall was the marble monument to dead police officers located in the main lobby at Parker Center. Hundreds of brass nameplates were mounted under a plaque that read: “E.O.W.” End of Watch. Every name on display had died in the line of duty. One of my main career goals had always been to stay off that damn wall.