Montecito Heights

by Colin Campbell

  There were three CCTV cameras, one on either side of the public area covering the counter and the front door, and one in the main office looking out at the public area. Grant hoped Citrin had been right about being able to hack internal systems and that Patton was watching right now. That was more important for Sunset TV and Film Inc.’s finished product than Grant’s tactical deployment.

  Grant’s tactical deployment was himself and nobody else.

  For now.

  Rodrigo Dominguez’s tactical deployment appeared to be somewhat more. The head of the Dominguez drug cartel came through the door from the parking garage with three men and Robin Citrin. In tactical terms, Citrin was a human shield. Grant kept any emotion off his face. He was almost as successful at keeping the anger from boiling inside him. Anger led to mistakes. Grant’s strength was built on remaining calm under all circumstances. Calm and relaxed and ready to act in an instant. He checked his watch.

  Eleven o’clock.

  “Right on time. Maybe you should be running the railway.”

  Dominguez stayed with his entourage near the garage exit, his eyes doing exactly the same as Grant’s had a few minutes ago. Scan complete, and keeping the exit close behind him, he beckoned Grant over.

  “It’s railroad in America. But nobody travels by train anymore.”

  “You know, history shows that whatever they say about Mussolini—mass murder, genocide, Hitler’s bag boy—at least he got the trains running on time. I guess that’s something we’ll have to hold off on when they write about you.”

  “History is written by the victors. I intend to write my own history.”

  Grant kept his eyes on Dominguez, but his peripheral vision focused on Citrin. She looked bedraggled and pale. Her hair was a tangled mess, and dark rings showed beneath her eyes. One hand was wrapped in a bloodstained white handkerchief. The shape of the fist made Grant’s blood run cold. It narrowed considerably where the little finger should have been.

  “Written in blood, no doubt.”

  “All history is written in blood.”

  “Be careful it isn’t written in yours.”

  Car tires squealed outside, and there was a flurry of gunfire. The customers threw worried glances toward the front door. A megaphoned voice shouted, “Cut. First positions again.” Dominguez didn’t flinch. His bodyguards kept position behind him, near the parking garage door. Grant smiled.

  “Movie capital of the world, Los Angeles.”

  “So they say. But we have our own business to conduct here.”

  He waved toward the nearest bank teller station. Grant nodded his agreement and began to move over to the counter. Dominguez followed. Two bodyguards moved with them, one holding onto Citrin’s arm. The other guy patted Grant down. He ran his hands over the main areas, body, arms, legs and ankles. He took the .45 out of Grant’s pocket and showed it to Dominguez. The third guy stayed by the door. Dominguez glanced at the gun and tut-tutted.

  “I believe it is a federal offence to bring a gun into a bank.”

  “Federal, is it?”

  “Certainly illegal. The other gun?”

  “Emptied it at Montecito Heights.”

  Dominguez indicated for the bodyguard to search Grant’s crotch.

  “Don’t be shy.”

  The guy felt Grant’s balls but came up empty and stepped back.

  Grant glanced at the wall clock.

  Ten past eleven.

  He wondered what was holding them up. The irony of his phrasing wasn’t lost on him. Whoever Ziff had employed wasn’t as punctual as Dominguez. Grant knew there was no set timetable for Ziff’s plan, but it must be close now. All Grant had to do was keep the ball in play until the action kicked off.

  “I don’t suppose a check will do?”

  “No.”

  “A hundred thousand is a big bag of cash.”

  “You can transfer it to my bank.”

  They were in front of a teller now. A more confident-looking guy than the others. Bigger too. Grant selected a withdrawal slip from the counter.

  “What bank?”

  The teller waited for instructions.

  Dominguez smiled.

  “You’re standing in it.”

  Grant kept the surprise off his face because it wasn’t a surprise. The fact that Dominguez owned Los Pueblo Trust and Banking was the reason he’d chosen this bank for the meeting. It was also the reason Dominguez felt secure enough to do the deal in a public place. Because this wasn’t a public place. It was a private place with a few members of the public sprinkled in.

  “You really are branching out, aren’t you?”

  The front doors slammed open, and two LAPD cops marched across the floor, guns drawn. The older one beckoned for the teller nearest the wood-paneled door to let him in. The other raised his voice for the customers.

  “Nobody move. We’ve had a report of a robbery in progress. Remain calm and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  A third cop stood just inside the door and closed it with his back. A short female teller let the first cop into the office, and he went immediately to the side door. When he opened it, another two cops came in from the alley and shut the door behind them. All five cops had their sidearms drawn. Two fired shots into the air, and the first shouted over the noise.

  “This is a robbery. Everybody on the floor. Now.”

  The tellers dropped to the ground. A customer shrieked and was hit in the face by the second cop. Dominguez glared across the counter but didn’t move. Grant kept his tone conversational.

  “Robbery capital of the world too.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Dominguez stood rigid with anger. The muttering of voices died to nothing as the customers got down on the floor. The teller at Grant’s service window threw a frightened look at his boss, then slowly dropped to his knees behind the counter. Grant’s attention was on the bodyguard holding Robin Citrin.

  In a combat situation, timing was everything. Step the wrong way at the wrong time and you could walk right into a bullet that would have passed you by. Stay in the same position for too long and you were a stationary target just waiting to be shot. A bank robbery was just a combat situation from a different angle. Timing was still the key.

  Timing and distraction.

  The bank robbers were the distraction.

  Grant quickly reassessed the battleground. The exits hadn’t changed, but two of them were no longer available. A fake cop from the movie shoot covered the front door. An armed man also blocked the side door into the alley. That only left the parking garage. A cartel guy with a broken nose stood in front of that. Best choice. With the exits whittled down to one, Grant turned his attention to the enemy. The enemy was pretty much everyone in the bank apart from the innocent bystanders. The bank staff worked for Dominguez. The bodyguards worked for Dominguez. The armed cops had come to rob Dominguez. The upside of that was that the armed cops neutralized the bodyguards, making the robbers Grant’s primary threat.

  The bodyguards threw glances at their boss but didn’t move.

  Dominguez stood firm, glaring at the cop in the middle of the public area.

  The cop glared back and came over to the only group left standing.

  “You fuckin’ deaf? On the ground.”

  Dominguez didn’t move. Considering the situation, he kept his voice calm but threatening. Grant was impressed.

  “Do you have any idea who you are robbing here?”

  The cop raised his gun at Dominguez’s face.

  “A bank.”

  Dominguez ignored the gun, staring the cop in the eyes.

  “A bank is a place. The owner is the most powerful drug cartel south of the border. And I am the owner of that cartel.”

  The cop blinked but didn’t lower the gun. Grant divided his attention between the confronta
tion in front of him, the guy holding Robin Citrin, and the other cops distributed throughout the bank. They were evenly spread. He met Citrin’s eyes briefly and winked. She didn’t appear to notice. She was in shock. Overhead, the fans spun lazily, like slow-motion helicopters in some Vietnam War movie. The wall clock ticked away the minutes. Fear filled the room like bad sweat: the customers’ fear on the polished wood floor, the bank tellers’ fear sprawled across the office carpet behind the counter, the bank robbers’ fear of having to open fire if this thing went bad. It was going bad right now.

  The cop put a brave face on it.

  “Then you should have opened a bank south of the border.”

  Timing. Grant used the standoff distraction to move half a pace to one side. Half a pace away from Dominguez and half a pace toward the guy holding Citrin. The move went unnoticed. It opened a gap and put Grant in the open. Dominguez continued to play his part, voice low and hard and nasty.

  “Los Angeles is south of the border. There are more Hispanics here than any other part of the United States. And they will find you. And your family. And I will personally ensure every living seed of your tree is exterminated. I will have your sisters and daughters and granddaughters raped and killed in front of your mother’s eyes before tearing out your living guts and staking them for the dogs.”

  The cop’s eyes were wide open. They didn’t blink. Water formed in the corner of each eye with the strain of not blinking. The gun hand trembled. The CCTV camera on the wall looked down on them. Grant slid another half pace to one side. The first cop came back through the wood-paneled door and joined his colleague.

  “What’s the holdup?”

  Dominguez turned eyes as hard as flint on the newcomer.

  “You are. Holding up a bank that you should have avoided like the plague.”

  The cop was dumbfounded. Nobody spoke to armed robbers like that.

  “What?”

  “You are all dead men in fake uniforms. If you leave now, I will spare the lives of your families.”

  The tension smelled almost as bad as the fear. Sour sweat and bad breath. The polish and air freshener smell of the bank couldn’t compete. Somebody needed to light a cigar or open the windows, but what was going to happen was everybody was going to get shot. Grant sensed it. He glanced at the wall clock: 11:25.

  Any second now. He checked the enemy positions again. One cop at the front door. One cop at the side door. Another one behind the counter. And two standing in front of Rodrigo Dominguez. That was the cops. The bodyguards were less spread out. One guy beside the parking garage door. One guy holding Citrin. And the third guy standing next to Dominguez. When the shit hit the fan, which Grant knew was about to happen, luck could take out Dominguez and one of the bodyguards straight away. It was better to be lucky than good.

  Grant wasn’t that lucky today.

  The first cop raised his gun too.

  “Are you fuckin’ insane?”

  The stare that Dominguez fixed on the cops proved what Grant had known all along. Rodrigo Dominguez wasn’t insane, he was evil. The man had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He was a cold-blooded killer of women and children and just about anything else that lived and breathed. He would shoot your dog. He would skin your penis. He was a very bad man. And very bad men were always incredibly lucky.

  Grant prepared to make his move. He couldn’t wait for the cavalry any longer. He glanced at Citrin and forced a smile, hoping that she would be all right but not believing it. His track record for rescuing endangered women wasn’t good. When he saw the parking garage door open he breathed a sigh of relief. Then the breath went out of him as a big black guy with a pump-action shotgun walked through the opening.

  Julius Posey worked the action to get the first bodyguard’s attention. Then he shot him in the chest when he turned to face him.

  The situation got fluid real fast. Fluid situations were the most dangerous. The odds had shifted from the four-to-one that was Dominguez against Grant to five-to-four that was the robbers against Dominguez. Now they shifted to four-to-nine, which was the four shotgun-wielding black guys against everybody else. Four, because that’s how many materialized in a split second after the first shotgun blast.

  The side door was kicked in, and a second shotgun took out the cop standing guard. Another black guy in a long overcoat came in from the alley. The fourth stepped around Posey toward the front door.

  Then everything happened at once.

  The bodyguard holding Citrin drew his weapon and shot the first cop in the throat above his Kevlar vest. Grant swept a strong leg across the back of Citrin’s ankles and dropped her to the ground. The second cop swung his gun away from Dominguez and shot the bodyguard in the chest. The black guy who came in from the alley let off two shots at the cop in the middle of the office, knocking him backwards and forcing the cop’s reflex shots up into the ceiling. The cop at the front door raised his gun double-handed, but the fourth black guy got him in the chest with a single shotgun blast. He dropped to his knees with a comical expression on his face.

  Then the odds shifted again. Fluid situation. Chuck Tanburro burst through the front door with four retired traffic cops. The traffic cops spread across the room, guns raised in the traditional short-armed two-handed stance. Tanburro was carrying a shotgun identical to the ones the black guys had. A police-issue Remington loaded with beanbag rounds. He noticed the spent beanbags on the floor, sturdy bags of shotgun pellets with rubber tentacles like a squid to slow them down in the air.

  The only people dead were the ones shot by the robber and the bodyguard.

  The body count was two.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  The second fake cop saw Grant come up from his sweeping leg strike on Citrin and identified him as another threat. Posey tugged a second shotgun out of the folds of his coat and tossed it through the air. Dominguez darted sideways and down, away from the fake cop. He brought something shiny out of his jacket pocket. The fake cop was momentarily confused as to which was the greater danger. The delay gave Grant just enough time to catch the shotgun and use its momentum to spin full circle. He fired from the hip at close range, lifting the cop off his feet and sending him backwards across the floor. The saggy little squid flattened against his Kevlar vest and dropped, still smoking, like a dead fish.

  Dominguez dragged Citrin to her feet and clamped one arm around her waist. He held her tight and forced the fingers of her good hand out. Light glinted off the blades of the secateurs as they tightened around her forefinger. He backed away into open space.

  Sirens began to sound across the city.

  Silence reigned inside the bank.

  The stunned robbers were disarmed quickly. The four traffic cops handcuffed the four survivors. The two wounded bodyguards moaned on the floor as they nursed bruised ribs. Body count was still just one robber and one bodyguard. So far. The three other black guys gathered in front of the counter. Posey kept station beside the parking garage door, shotgun leveled at Dominguez’s back. Grant had the cartel boss covered from the front. The situation was tense. Tense situations provoked humor as a defense mechanism. Posey took two paces toward Grant.

  “Thanks for the call. But next time you want my boys to step into a roomful of hot lead, we’s gonna want more than shotgun condoms.”

  Grant kept his eyes on Dominguez but spoke to Posey.

  “I’ll be able to argue deputizing you. Giving four armed robbers live shotguns in a bank would be hard to justify.”

  He stared into the drug lord’s eyes but still spoke to Posey.

  “Back in England we used rubber bullets. Lots of controversy over that. These beanbag rounds are non-lethal but effective. Optimum range is thirty feet. They’ll deliver a strike like being hit across the ribs with a baseball bat. Farther than that and they’re not very accurate. Up close, like six feet”—Grant was six feet from Domin
guez—“and they’ll rip your balls off. Go for the central body mass, and they’ll break your ribs. Raise it above that, and it’s a kill shot.”

  The sirens were getting nearer and there were more of them.

  Grant didn’t smile. Humor was over. He spoke directly to Dominguez.

  “You’ve got nowhere to go but hell.”

  Dominguez squeezed the secateurs, and Citrin whimpered.

  “I have no illusions about going to hell.”

  He took two shuffling steps backwards, toward the parking garage, keeping Citrin between him and Grant like a full-length body vest. Grant had no shot at his body mass or his balls. Dominguez saw the indecision on Grant’s face.

  “But not today.”

  Grant took two steps, keeping pace with the drug lord. Posey had to step aside. Distraction. It was Grant’s only chance. Keep Dominguez talking and hope he let his guard down.

  “You just confessed to being the owner of the biggest drug cartel south of the border on national television.”

  Dominguez stopped in front of the door.

  Grant nodded backwards to the CCTV camera on the far wall.

  “Smile. You’re on Candid Camera.”

  He brought the shotgun up to his shoulder. This needed to be a more accurate shot than firing from the hip. Citrin’s eyes flared in panic. Dominguez kept moving backwards. He was almost at the door. Posey had sidestepped to keep out of his way. Both shotguns were round the front of the human shield now. A tactical error that was too late to change. Posey glanced at Grant.

  “Your call, man.”

  Grant knew the decision was his. The shotgun pointed straight at Citrin’s face. Citrin was shorter than Dominguez, but he was crouching behind her. That put her face right in front of his throat. The kill shot. Trouble was, it would be a double kill shot. One to take out the hostage and the other to kill Dominguez. Grant had been here before. He had stared into a desperate woman’s eyes and made the only choice available. Twice. It didn’t look as if it was going to be third time lucky.