Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  “You’re too clever for your own good,” Ira said.

  “But I’m right, right? It’s not burglary, because I don’t have the intent to steal anything. And it’s not trespass, because I don’t intend to occupy the place for any length of time. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “It’s quite true that the penal code requires you have the specific intent to interfere with another’s property rights, and that you actually did so interfere.”

  “If I’m there for a short time, have a look see, and get out, it’s not trespass.”

  “I assume you’re going to do your lock-picking skills to get in the door.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “If I get dinged for breaking and entering, I can take it.”

  “As much as it pains me to correct you,” Ira said, “there is no crime in California called ‘breaking and entering.’ That’s for the TV shows.”

  “So I’m good,” I said.

  “What about the security system? It’s sure to be sophisticated.”

  “That’s where you come in,” I said.

  “Oh, I do?”

  “That’s your meat. So what do you suggest?”

  “I suggest we knock on the door and politely ask to speak with him.”

  “I love this plan,” I said. “And plan B is we break in and I mess him up some.”

  “There will be no plan B, Michael.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We took Ira’s van toward Studio City.

  “Strategy,” Ira said. “If he is home, he will likely not immediately open the door to us. We must coax him to do so.”

  “You have a suggestion?”

  “We tell him we’ve come about Bianca, that we have some information we need to discuss.”

  “Good,” I said. “One of my rules is that we don’t owe the truth to those who lie.”

  “We are not lying,” Ira said.

  “Then we’re withholding the whole truth,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Ira said. “After all, God did the same thing.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “When God rejected Saul as King of Israel, he told the prophet Samuel to go to the house of Jesse, where he would reveal the new king, which would be David. Samuel said he was afraid Saul would find out and try to kill him. God told Samuel to take a heifer with him, and say that he had come to offer a sacrifice. This was true, but not the whole truth, and it prevented potential evil.”

  “We have no cow,” I said. “But we do have info on Bianca.”

  “That’s it.”

  “And if he doesn’t open the door?” I said.

  “We tell him we will return with the police,” Ira said.

  “Will the police come with us?”

  “I have the power of persuasion,” Ira said.

  “And if he does let us in?”

  “We begin slowly to close the net. At some point, a netted animal will strike. He will make some move, at which point you will subdue him.”

  “I like that part,” I said.

  “This will be purely out of self-defense,” Ira said.

  I smiled.

  Ira said, “Just remember, the law requires you may only use the degree of force reasonably necessary under the circumstances. Don’t get too enthusiastic. Just control. And once that happens, we will conduct a search of the house.”

  “Can we do that?” I said.

  “We are not law enforcement,” Ira said. “We will be operating under our own authority. Anything we find can be turned over to the police, who may rightfully use it.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?”

  “Timothy Aiken could threaten to sue us. But he won’t. Unless he’s stupid, and I don’t believe he is. Dangerous, but not stupid.”

  “What if he has a weapon?”

  “He won’t when he lets us inside,” Ira said. “We keep an eye on him. We do our talking standing up.”

  We stopped a little way down the street from the Aiken house. We could see most of it, including the driveway. Timothy Aiken’s black Escalade was parked there.

  Ira got his forearm crutches from behind the seat and said, “Ready?”

  “Let’s go, Wyatt,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “I’m Doc Holliday.”

  “This is not the O.K. Corral,” Ira said, “and it’s best you not think of it that way.”

  “I’m your huckleberry,” I said, and got out of the van. I’m sure Ira sighed, but I didn’t hear him.

  We walked up to the front door. Same door, same camera as the first time I was here. I knocked, waited, knocked again.

  A voice inside said, “What do you want?”

  “We need to talk, Mr. Aiken,” Ira said.

  “I told him I had nothing to say,” Aiken said.

  “There’s more information now,” Ira said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  “No,” Timothy Aiken said.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Ira said. “The information concerns your daughter.”

  Pause.

  Then a click, and the door opened.

  Timothy Aiken was barefoot, dressed in black jeans and a red golf shirt, untucked.

  “What about Bianca?” he said.

  “Mind if we come in?” I said.

  “Yeah, I do,” Timothy said.

  “Thanks,” I said, and pushed the door open all the way and stepped past him.

  “Hey!” Aiken said.

  “Michael!” Ira said.

  I got behind Aiken so he was between me and Ira.

  “You don’t mind if I have a look around, do you?” I said.

  “Got out of my house!” Aiken said.

  “Please excuse this idiot,” Ira said. “Michael, just stay where you are.”

  The clever rabbi came in.

  “I don’t want either one of you here,” Aiken said.

  “Two minutes of your time,” Ira said. “Can we sit?”

  “No,” Aiken said. “Say what you’re going to say and leave.”

  “Very well,” Ira said.

  “Let me,” I said.

  “Calm yourself, Michael. Mr. Aiken, I am Ira Rosen, an attorney representing Clint Cunningham. You already know my blunderbuss, Mr. Romeo.”

  “Yeah,” Aiken said. “What about my daughter?”

  Ira said, “Yes, well, I do not wish to see anyone of her age caught up in something that could ruin the rest of her life.”

  “Like what?” Aiken said.

  “For example, selling cheating materials to schoolmates,” Ira said.

  “How would you know that?” Aiken said.

  I raised my hand. “I caught her and her boyfriend in flagrante delicto.”

  “In what?” Aiken said.

  “Blazing offense,” I said. “Red-handed. Selling tests and papers to another student.”

  “We also need to explore another connection,” Ira said. “One that does not seem entirely random.”

  Aiken tried to keep his demeanor angry, but he was starting to look nervous. His eyes did a little darting around.

  Ira said, “Specifically, your connection to a Mr. Adrian Hart.”

  Aiken paused. “Who?”

  “The gentleman who visited you today.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Aiken said.

  I said, “You’re in this up to your eyeballs, Aiken, and we’re going to prove it and take you down, and your daughter, too. Because I think you—”

  “Michael,” Ira said

  “—pimped her out to Clint Cunningham, set him up as a fall guy, and then scared him so bad he’s afraid to talk. You and Hart are running drugs at Elias. And one more thing. You took out a cop with a rifle shot meant for me. Not too good for an Army sharpshooter such as yourself.”

  His eyes signaled his next move. I’d seen it a hundred times in the cage. Read the eyes, control the man.

  He made a dash toward the innards of his house.

  All I had to do was stick out my good leg and trip him.<
br />
  He went sprawling on the hardwood floor.

  Which is when I looked up at the staircase.

  And saw Bianca Aiken, pointing a 9 mil at me.

  “Stop!” Bianca said.

  The gun was unsteady in her hand.

  And her finger was on the trigger.

  Timothy Aiken got to his knees. He was about to jump up.

  I dipped and wrapped my arm around his throat. I pulled him up, making him a human shield between me and the girl with the gun.

  “Let him go!” Bianca said.

  Ira spoke with calm authority. “Put the gun down, Bianca. No one will get hurt.”

  The girl seemed on the verge of tears when she repeated, “Let him go!”

  “Take your finger off the trigger, Bianca,” I said.

  “Let’s talk this through,” Ira said.

  Bianca turned the gun on Ira.

  “It’s all right,” Ira said. “We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

  Timothy struggled against my hold, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You’re going to kill us!” Bianca said.

  “No one dies today,” I said. “Just take your finger off the trigger and point the gun down.”

  Bianca only did the second thing.

  Which is why the gun went off.

  A trigger-finger twitch happens when there’s too much stress coursing through your nerves. It’s involuntary, and any movement can set it off. When Bianca, almost crying, lowered the gun, her finger pulled the trigger.

  Blam… and a bullet splintered the stairs.

  Bianca screamed, slipped backward, the gun came up.

  Another shot fired.

  It tore into Timothy Aiken’s chest.

  Bianca screamed again, louder, and dropped the gun.

  “Daddy!” She scrambled down the remaining stairs.

  I let go of Aiken’s neck and lowered him to the floor. His mouth flapped open and closed as he sought breath. Blood spurted from his chest.

  Dropping to her knees, Bianca put her hands on her father’s shirt. Her pitiful wail cut the air.

  Ira went to his knees and pushed Bianca out of the way. “Take her,” he said to me. “And call 911.”

  I lifted Bianca off her father. She writhed and screamed. I carried the package into the living room. I sat in a chair and held her on my lap, my arms wrapped around her.

  “Easy, easy, your dad will be looked after,” I said. “Ira knows what he’s doing. Okay? I’m calling 911. Okay?”

  She made a last twitch, then relaxed. I kept my left arm around her, got my phone with my right. I called 911 and made the report.

  Bianca went completely limp.

  She’d passed out.

  I picked her up and laid her on the sofa. There was a throw blanket there. I pulled it over her.

  I went back to Ira. He was pressing on Aiken’s chest with both hands.

  “Towels, anything,” he said.

  I looked for the nearest bathroom. Got two towels off the rack and came back. Ira applied them and pressed down again.

  “Where’s the girl?” he asked.

  “Passed out,” I said.

  “Keep an eye on her,” Ira said.

  I sat with her, glad she was out. She was going to need a lot of help after this. I hoped she’d get the right people on it. So much bad psych out there, trendy theories, bogus practices—if any real attention was paid at all. Gertrude Stein called Hemingway’s generation “lost,” simply because they were drifting through Paris, drinking and chattering. Bianca’s generation was not just lost, but damaged. Betrayed by her father into a scheme like this one. And now facing the prospect of having killed him. Poor kid. Poor, poor kid.

  Paramedics and cops came on scene. A good, sympathetic female officer took Bianca under her wing. Timothy Aiken was put on a gurney and wheeled out. Ira spoke to another officer.

  I backed away and started looking around while I had the chance. As Ira said, anything found could be used as evidence, as I was not law enforcement. But my window of time was short.

  The stairway was where the activity was, so I stayed on the ground floor. The kitchen, the laundry room, a door to the garage.

  I went through it.

  Looked around. Neat, with shelves and tools. A cooler. Nothing in it but frozen meat and chicken and assorted items, like mint chip ice cream and Newman's Own Thin & Crispy Pizzas.

  There were three cabinets on one wall. They held paint cans, bleach, weed killer, tools, electric wire, rope. As I was not redesigning a house, I left all this and went back inside.

  The spacious living room had a bar with a granite top. Behind it was a full-on liquor shelf that would have done a mid-size restaurant proud. A classic place to store a weapon is underneath a bar top, so I came around and had a look. No guns.

  Turning, I had a look at the liquor shelf. Well stocked, with a preference for vodka and bourbon. The shelf stuck out from the wall about eight inches and had four levels. I took a peek under the bottom shelf, another place a weapon might be hidden. Nothing there.

  Except a padlock.

  Now that was interesting. It was a heavy-duty lock in the bottom corner. It was through a latch which you couldn’t see unless you looked right at it.

  It was crying out to me to be picked.

  There is one padlock that’s nearly impossible to pick, the Bowley. It’s been done, but only with the right tools and plenty of time. This wasn’t a Bowley, so my Joey Feint lock-pick kit would do the trick.

  It took me one minute to pop the lock.

  When I did, the entire liquor shelf moved an inch. I stood and pulled it open.

  Behind it was a cache of guns.

  Six handguns. A shotgun.

  And one sniper rifle. A Remington 700, complete with a long-range scope.

  “Hey, what’re you doing there?”

  A detective, from the look of him—shield worn on his belt—had come upon my little enterprise.

  “I’m saving you time,” I said.

  He was a sinewy man in his fifties with the suspicious look of an LAPD lifer. But his look went from suspicion to interest as he came closer and saw the weapons.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said.

  “My name’s Romeo,” I said. “I work for the lawyer, Ira Rosen. We came here to talk to Aiken and no doubt you heard what happened.”

  “What made you think you could search the place?”

  “The fact that I’m a private citizen,” I said. “And took no direction from you. I suggest you get ballistics on this Remington and see if there’s a match with the slug they took out of an LAPD officer named Aoki. Talk to an SID investigator named Monica Helberg.”

  The detective took out his phone and snapped a pic of the weapons.

  “I have some questions for you,” the detective said.

  “I have some answers,” I said.

  So did Ira, who handled the whole aftermath with his usual panache. Which is why I kept my tongue in check as much as I could. It is sometimes possible.

  Our next stop was at the LAPD station in the Valley where Spinoza was in the trauma ward, otherwise known as a corner of the parking lot. The officer who’d had Spinoza brought in, Congreve, was there.

  “Nothing to report yet,” he said. “It’s going to take awhile.”

  “We have something to report,” I said. “Has an investigator been assigned to this yet?”

  “That’d be Detective Palsberg,” Congreve said. “You want to talk to him?”

  “He’ll want to talk to us,” I said.

  “Have a seat.”

  Ronald Palsberg had career-division written all over him. Meaning he’d made detective but never got to Robbery-Homicide Division, the elite squad downtown. But often these local guys are the ones who do the best grunt work, which is sometimes taken away from them by an RHD guy with eyes on good publicity or political leverage.

  Palsberg had a veteran paunch and a friendly demeanor. His hair was close cropp
ed and the color of unpolished handcuffs. He wore a mask.

  We did the introductions and laid out our common ground. He wanted to take us inside for an interview, but I said, “I know who did it, and where we can find him.”

  I explained why.

  “My partner’s out for the day,” Palsberg said. “I can at least go ask a few questions.”

  “I suggest you go with backup,” I said.

  Box Canyon is a hilly, rocky, scrubby, hot and inhospitable slice of earth between L.A. and Ventura Counties. A haven for snakes, coyotes, skunks, possums and the occasional bobcat. They used to shoot a lot of TV Westerns there because it was so close to Hollywood. It wasn’t much for homes except for a few hermit types in shacks.

  Then the hippies of the 1960s discovered it. And gradually, actual houses began to spring up, spaced well apart and of no common design. More than a few bikers came to call the place home, too. Some of the roads snaking around the place aren’t paved.

  That was the case of the San Dae-Ho pad. Palsberg rode with two officers in a black-and-white. Ira and I followed in Ira’s van. We stopped thirty yards from the house.

  Palsberg got out and came to Ira’s window.

  “That the van?” he asked.

  “It is,” I said.

  “Stay here,” he said. “If I need you for anything I’ll let you know.”

  He went back to the black-and-white. Then he and two male officers started up the road.

  “What do you think?” I asked Ira.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Ira said. “He’ll ask some questions, then ask if he can take a look in the van. If San Dae-Ho says no, he’ll try to get a warrant.”

  “Try?”

  “Your statement is a thin reed for probable cause. But he and the officers will be on the alert for anything in plain view that might point to possible criminal activity.”

  “Can they look in the garage?”

  “Not unless it’s open and viewable from the driveway. Officers can approach a house and anything they can see is fair game.”

  “Can they look through the windows of the van?”

  “Probably,” Ira said. “There was a case out of the Ninth Circuit where DEA agents looked through the tinted windows of a parked van at a 7-Eleven. It held there was a lesser expectation of privacy for a van in a public place, even with tinted windows. The difference here is that the van is parked on a private driveway. It’d be safer to get a warrant.”