Cold Hit Page 31

  “Somebody will have to help us out,” his patrician bearing still in place.

  “You’re under arrest,” Chief Filosiani said.

  Agent Underwood stepped forward. “FBI,” he bellowed.

  “I know who you are, asshole,” Virtue snapped. “You work for me.”

  “Not anymore,” Underwood replied, his pale complexion coloring.

  Minutes later Virtue was helped out of the crippled jet. He didn’t expect to see me alive, and stopped to face me as he passed. A strange look shadowed his face as if, for the first time, he realized he might actually be in some trouble.

  “You’ll never assess the damage you’ve done to your country,” he said.

  “You’re the one who’s been damaging it,” I answered.

  Virtue seemed stunned by this. Then came self-righteous anger. “People like you are great moralizers, but have damn few solutions when it comes to getting this country where she needs to go.”

  “You’re certainly not getting us there by trashing the Rule of Law and the Constitution.”

  “The Constitution?” he snorted. “What’s any of this got to do with the Constitution? I’m talking about global terrorism. This country has fought its last war of nations. We’re now engaged in a war of ideologies. The rules have to change when your enemy has no conscience or borders. But you’ll never understand that.”

  “I understand that the Patriot Act and FISA are rolling back the search and seizure rights provided by the Fourth Amendment. The FISA court trashes the Eleventh Amendment limiting judicial powers and the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. We’re supposed to beat terrorists by becoming despots?”

  “Traitors always accuse patriots of despotism,” he shot back.

  “No,” I said softly. “Despots always accuse patriots of treason.”

  64

  Sometimes things just have to get a lot worse before they can get better. A wise, if somewhat painful concept.

  I just wanted my current string of downers to come to an end. But it wasn’t to be. Zack’s funeral and my son’s USC visit were on a collision course for the same day.

  I pulled Chooch aside and tried to explain it to him. “This guy was my partner and he died saving my life.”

  We were in Chooch’s bedroom two days before the funeral and the scheduled USC visit, which were both set for Sunday. “There’s not much that would keep me from doing this with you, son, but I can’t miss the funeral. I owe Zack too much.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I understand,” Chooch said, but his face was long and there was real disappointment in his dark eyes.

  Saturday night I decided to take the family out to dinner to make up for it.

  The dinner didn’t work out either.

  On the way to the restaurant, Alexa happened to mention that accounting had just notified her they were holding up Zack’s Line of Duty death benefits because of questions pertaining to his possible involvement in the Fingertip murder case.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Sammy killed those homeless guys?” I said, hotly.

  “Shane, I feel terrible about this, but it’s out of my hands. As soon as Homicide Special closes the serial murder case, and as long as Zack’s not involved, then the paperwork can proceed. We can’t give Zack Line of Duty benefits or the two extra years on his pension as long as he’s in any way a suspect. The same goes for you putting him up for the Medal of Valor. The press would skin us alive.”

  So to keep the bottle flies happy, we were going to deny Zack the only two things he’d asked me to do when he died.

  I started brooding like a ten-year-old and ruined my own dinner party. But I knew how the game was played. There would be no more murders, so the task force would disband and the case would eventually go cold. Zack would remain a suspect and his survivor benefits would be frozen forever.

  At the restaurant, Alexa and I fell into a chilly silence. Dell and Chooch made small talk and tried not to get us going again.

  Later, sitting in the backyard, Alexa and I attempted to clean up the trouble between us. I admitted that I knew it wasn’t technically her fault this had happened to Zack.

  “Technically?” she said, seizing on this one, carefully parsed word.

  “You were worried about me,” I added. “You went to the wrong window. Shit happens.”

  “I was trying to save your life.”

  “Yeah, but Zack was the one who actually did.”

  As I said it, I remembered that in the end it was Alexa who smoked Sammy Petrovitch. She and Zack had both saved my life. It seemed my life took a lot of saving. I needed to calm myself down. Yelling at Alexa wouldn’t solve anything. After about five minutes of silence, I tried to change the subject.

  “How do you come out on Virtue, and what he did?”

  “He’s just bad material. He’s going away. The system is good. You can’t blame the system for one bad apple. Fortunately, Nix survived, or we wouldn’t be able to file against the son-of-a-bitch. As it is, once Nix turns state’s evidence, Virtue is toast. If he wants to stay in politics, he’ll have to run for the convict council in Soledad.”

  I thought about what she said, and then asked, “Is this new, redefined system really good, or are we, little by little, losing what this country once stood for?”

  “We’re cops, Shane. We need all the powers we can get to put dirtbags away.”

  “Virtue was using USPA and FISA to take away due process. Do we really want these emergency powers and lack of due process in the system?”

  “Cops are getting overrun by crime,” she argued. “If you don’t believe me, just take a look at my monthly stats.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I fell silent.

  “Go ahead and say it.” She knew I didn’t agree.

  “I just don’t think it’s smart to give up our freedoms in an attempt to protect them.”

  She sat quietly for a long moment, then without saying anything else, got up and went into the house.

  On Sunday, Alexa and I went to Zack’s funeral. It was a very small turnout. He told me once that he didn’t have many cop buddies, and this sparse event surely proved it. Fran was there with their two boys. I was glad to see Broadway and Perry. Roger was on crutches with his leg wrapped to the hip. My bandaged left hand wasn’t quite so huge now, but I still couldn’t open a can of beer. Between the two of us there was enough gauze to wrap a mummy.

  Emdee and I helped Roger hobble across the lawn to the gravesite. Alexa and I spoke to Fran and both of Zack’s sons. They looked confused and rigid. This isn’t the way anybody planned for it to end. Too much had been left unsaid. We took our places in a small group of mourners.

  Just before the service began, I was surprised to see Stanislov Bambarak pull up in his embassy car, followed a few minutes later by Bimini Wright in her silver Jag. They made their way over to us. Bimini looked gorgeous in a simple black dress. Stanislov, as usual, was as big and wrinkled as a walrus.

  The service was mercifully short. After it was over, we walked toward the parking lot. The Russian and the CIA agent shook hands with Roger, Emdee, Alexa, and me.

  “Bit of hard cheese, this,” Stanislov said, indicating the coffin. “Sorry I couldn’t help out.”

  “Lotta people had to die to keep me alive,” I said.

  “Come on, Shane. Stop it,” Alexa said sharply. She was determined to get me past this.

  Bimini agreed with Alexa. She looked at me and said, “Sometimes freedom comes with a high price tag, Shane.”

  I had asked others to pay so much that I really didn’t know how to respond.

  Then she smiled brightly. “Guess what? After you got us all together, Stan and I decided to compare some more notes. We finally solved the ’Eighty-five Problem. Kersey Nix filled in the blanks and confirmed our theory two days ago. Guess who the fourth man turned out to be?”

  “Virtue.”

  I’d had three weeks to ponder it since the frustrating hours spent locked in the trunk of Sam
my’s car. Virtue was an FBI agent stationed in Moscow in 1985. Virtue was heartless and ambitious. He paid the Petrovitches to be his moles inside the KGB, then brought them to L.A. to work for him off the books. I figured back in ’85, he sold information to both sides to gain power. It was a brilliant political move. By giving up some of Bimini’s Russian double agents, he gained influence with the bureaucrats inside the KGB, and that allowed him to learn the identity of the American traitors. By catching Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, he subsequently became a star in Washington. He was a traitor who thought he was a patriot.

  “I guess there is some good that comes from everything,” Broadway said. “If Sammy Petrovitch hadn’t snapped and started killing homeless men, who knows, it might have ended with R. A. Virtue in the White House.”

  “Now that we’ve put the hat on that piece of business, I guess my people will be sending me home,” Stanislov said.

  “What people are those?” I deadpanned. “Are we talking about the directors of the Moscow Ballet?”

  He chuckled. “Rather silly, I know, but you take the post they give you.” He smiled at Bimini. “I’ve sort of grown used to it here—the warm weather, the sunshine in winter. Agent Wright said if I retire and promise not to dabble in espionage, she’ll look into getting me permanent resident status.”

  “You know what they say?” I said, smiling. “Once you buy your first barbecue you’ll never leave L.A.”

  They asked all of us to join them for lunch, but I needed to talk to Fran. Alexa was going in to the office, and Roger and Emdee had plans, so we begged off and watched them go. As they headed toward their cars, Stanislov accidentally bumped up against the beautiful CIA agent. Or was it an accident?

  After everybody left, I waited for Fran to leave the gravesite and took her aside. We stood under the shade of a beautiful elm.

  “I put Zack up for the Medal of Valor,” I said. “He’s always wanted it. I think what he did, saving my life, certainly qualifies him.”

  Even as I said it, I realized that my chances of getting him that medal while he was still on the Fingertip suspect list were somewhere near infinitesimal.

  “I don’t care about that damn medal. That was Zack’s fantasy. My needs are more basic. Zack Junior goes to college next year. I can’t afford to send him without Zack’s line-of-duty benefits.”

  “I’ll find a way to get it for you,” I took her hand and squeezed it. “Now both of you have my word.”

  65

  Chooch signed his letter of intent in mid-February. He was going to USC on a full athletic scholarship.

  A few weeks later, to celebrate, I planned a weekend boat outing to Central California, and the whole family, including Franco, was loaded into the car with our luggage and scuba gear. All the way over the Grapevine Chooch talked about college. You could hear how happy he was.

  “You gotta go with me during spring ball, and meet the rest of the coaches, Dad.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” I told him—and I was. Chooch had sorted out his priorities and I was proud of him.

  We arrived up at New Melones Lake at 10 P.M. and checked into the Pine Tree Inn. The next morning, we got in the car and drove up to the lake. On the east shore was a rental dock where you could lease houseboats. We picked a bright blue one named Lazy Daze. After a short instruction course on how to run it, we loaded the scuba equipment aboard and headed out onto the lake.

  I could see the Petrovitch’s burned-down Swiss chalet across the water. We maneuvered up close to their dock and put the anchor down.

  As I was putting on my wetsuit and air tank, Alexa said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get the department to foot the bill for this.” She smiled sheepishly. “With the current budget crunch and the Fingertip case inactive, I couldn’t scare up much enthusiasm.”

  “Right.”

  It was a beautiful morning. The unusually warm weather continued and the temperature was already in the mid-seventies. She was wearing a tiny string bikini, sitting in the back of the houseboat. I was tempted to jump her right there, but Franco and the kids were watching.

  On that Saturday, Chooch and I made ten dives, filled our air tanks four times and found nothing. Sunday was more of the same. I dove, Chooch dove. The mountain stream that fed the lake was ice cold, and even with our wetsuits we could only stay down for twenty minutes. We were working a grid pattern I had drawn up, trying hard not to miss a patch of lake bottom. We started close to the Petrovitches’ dock and moved out, circle grid by circle grid. It was tough, demanding work. The wind blew the houseboat at anchor and I had to keep sighting against points onshore to keep from missing sections.

  On the last dive Sunday evening, just before sunset, I found an oil drum secured to the bottom with two Danforth anchors. Chooch and I hooked a line to the drum and floated a buoy. Then I called the sheriff’s office.

  Monday morning a police dive boat with an electric winch was trailered up from Sonora. We finally hauled the big drum topside and set it on the rear deck of the houseboat. We had to cut the welded top off with a torch.

  Inside we found Calvin Lerner.

  His body was well preserved due to the icy water at the bottom of that mountain lake.

  My luck had finally changed. I found what I’d been searching for.

  All of Lerner’s fingertips had been cut off and the Medical Corps symbol was carved on his chest, proving once and for all that Sammy Petrovitch was the unsub.

  Later that day the ME retrieved a 5.45-mm slug from Calvin’s head. Ballistics matched it to the gun we found on Sammy’s body—the same gun that had killed Martin Kobb and Davide Andrazack. With that, the Fingertip murders were finally down.

  The Police Commission met the following month to decide on the annual Medal of Valor recipients awarded in May.

  Roger Broadway, Emdee Perry, and I were recognized, but Zack Farrell was not awarded a medal.

  The commission never explained why. I think, given everything that had happened, it was easier for them if Zack just faded away. “I’m not a hundred-dollar bill,” he’d once told me. “Not everybody’s gonna like me.” It was certainly proving to be true.

  The LAPD Accounting Office released Zack’s survivor benefits and Fran called to tell me that with the money, Zack Junior would be able to go to USC. He would be a freshman in the same class as Chooch. We made arrangements to get our sons together before school started.

  That was pretty much it, except for one last thing.

  On a cold day in late May, Alexa and I drove back to Forest Lawn. Rain clouds were threatening on the horizon. We stood by Zack’s grave as the air grew heavy with moisture and lightning bolts shot shimmering streaks of electricity toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

  Some promises are hard to keep. Where Zack was concerned, I had made too many, and kept too few.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Alexa asked. “Somebody will just steal it.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I reached in my pocket and took my own Medal of Valor out of its velvet box. The gold medallion hung on a red, white, and blue ribbon. Awards and medals had never mattered much to me. They were only symbols, usually given by people who hadn’t been there and didn’t know what had really happened. Like love and respect, some things only gain value when you give them away.

  I laid the glittering medal pendant on Zack’s headstone, then said a prayer and told my partner how sorry I was. How terrible I felt about the way it ended.

  “I love you, but you’re a strange man,” Alexa whispered, holding my hand. “How does giving your medal away help? Zach’s dead. He doesn’t even know.”

  Thunder shook the hills. “Don’t worry,” I told her as the first heavy drops of rain fell. “He knows.”

  READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM

  STEPHEN J. CANNELL’S NEXT BOOK

  White Sister

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  FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS!

  “It’s Tommy Sepulveda,” a v
oice crackled through the telephone.

  “What’s up, Tom?” I said.

  Tommy Sepulveda and Raphael Figueroa were a detective team who worked with me at Homicide Special. Since Sepulveda Boulevard and Figueroa Street are two main drags in Los Angeles, it was inevitable that some wise guy in personnel would find a way to put them together. Sepulveda was Italian; Figueroa, a second-generation Mexican-American. They were good dicks and had a cubicle two over from me and Sally Quinn, my incoming partner. I remembered seeing that Sepulveda and Figueroa were next up on the roll-out board when I had left the office for the jail at ten this morning.

  “Listen, Shane, you need to get up to the top of Mulholland Drive right now,” Tommy said.

  “I’m not back in rotation yet. I’m breaking in a new partner next week.”

  “We just got an APE case. You need to get up here now!” He sounded tense and all of my alarms started flashing. An APE case was sixth-floor speak for Acute Political Emergency.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m calling you on a radio hook-up. My cell doesn’t work up here. I don’t want this out on an open channel. Just move it.”

  “On my way.” I hung up and wondered what the hell to do with Jonathan Bodine, the homeless man I’d run over earlier in the day. If I left him here alone, there wouldn’t be anything left in the house when I got back. The shower had stopped running in Chooch’s bathroom, so I went looking for him. He was in the kitchen foraging in my refrigerator, his hair still wet, wearing a towel wrapped around his skinny hips. He was holding a leg of lamb in his right hand, gnawing it right off the bone. In his left hand he had an open bottle of table wine.

  “We gotta go.”

  “I’m having dinner.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  I rushed into Chooch’s room and grabbed the clothes I’d laid out for him, snatched his grimy boots off the floor, and hurried back into the kitchen, throwing the bundle on the dinette table.

  “Put ’em on. We’re leaving.” My stomach was balled up in a knot. There was only one reason I could come up with why Sepulveda would call me out on an APE case. It had something to do with my missing wife.