Green Monster

by Rick Shefchik

  The bus driver, a paunchy man wearing checkered suspenders, turned to look out his side window and saw Sam aiming his Glock at him.

  “Stop the bus! Now!” Sam shouted.

  The driver stared incredulously at the barrel of Sam’s gun, then heard a gunshot and saw his side-mount rearview mirror shatter. Sam hunched back down in his seat as the bus driver stomped on his brake. The bus halted immediately, sending the tour guide tumbling forward to his knees and his megaphone clattering onto the street. Heather quickly took the opening, jerking the wheel to the right and cutting in front of the bus in the middle of the intersection to go north on Genessee. Mink’s car was stuck behind the bus.

  “Not too fast,” Sam said to Heather. “Wait until they make the turn. We don’t want to lose them.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Frankie wailed. “Of course we want to lose them!”

  Sam heard a shot fired from Mink’s car, which was still trying to maneuver around the tour bus.

  “Where does Bruce Kenwood live, Frankie?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Stop the car,” Sam said to Heather. He pointed his gun at Frankie’s head. “Get out, Frankie.”

  “What? No—they’ll kill me!”

  They heard two more shots; one of them hit a palm tree on the boulevard a few feet from them, and the other pinged off the BMW’s windshield.

  “Where’s Bruce Kenwood?”

  “Palos Verdes!” Frankie yelled.

  “I need an address.”

  “I’m tryin’ to think, dammit! It’s 20—no, 2120 Yarmouth Road. Now let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  Sam looked back at the intersection, where Mink’s Cadillac had cleared the tour bus and was now speeding up Genessee toward them.

  “Okay, hit it,” Sam said to Heather.

  Heather slammed the car into gear and sped a block down Genessee, then did a skidding left onto Oakwood Avenue. Sam took out his cell phone and speed-dialed a phone number he’d entered into his directory while he and Heather were at Frankie’s house with Fawna.

  “L.A. Sheriff’s Department, West Hollywood station,” he heard the dispatcher answer.

  “You know that double homicide at Laswell’s Gym in Glendale last night?” Sam said. “The guys who did it have been in a car accident at the intersection of Oakwood and Ogden,” Sam said. “Get here fast.”

  He closed the phone as Heather was reaching Ogden, going close to 60. She hit the brakes and skidded into a right turn, then stomped on the gas again. Mink’s car was less than a half-block behind them.

  “Hey!” Frankie said, cautiously raising his head above seat level to look around. “That’s my house!”

  And that was Frankie’s Mercedes in the driveway, visible as the BMW gathered speed past Frankie’s yard, but not visible to the car chasing them, thanks to a thick hedge separating Frankie’s driveway from his Russian neighbor’s yard. And that was Fawna sitting in the Mercedes, putting the car into neutral when she heard Heather sound the horn as the BMW sped by. Fawna stepped out of the car and watched it roll down the driveway and into street just as Mink’s Cadillac rounded the corner and started to accelerate. At the wheel of the Cadillac, Leon had no chance to stop.

  The Cadillac slammed into the side of the Mercedes, spinning both cars around until they were facing in the opposite direction from the vanishing BMW.

  The rear half of Frankie’s car was caved in, and the hood of the Cadillac had buckled in two and was shoved up against its windshield. Even if Leon had been able to get the smoking engine started again, he couldn’t have seen where he was going.

  Leon, Joey Icebox, and Mink all got out of the car to look at the damage. Joey noticed Fawna standing in the driveway where the Mercedes had been.

  “Hey, you stupid bitch!” he yelled at her. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  Joey strode over to Fawna as though he intended to beat the hell out of her, but as he reached for the cowering woman, they all heard police sirens begin to wail, coming south on Fairfax and getting louder.

  Heather had seen the wreck in her rearview mirror; Sam saw it while he looked backward between the front bucket seats. Frankie heard it, but couldn’t bring himself to look.

  Heather slowed down when she got to Oakwood and took a left. She went two more blocks west, this time under the speed limit on the residential street, until she got to Fairfax. She waited there at a red light as four squad cars roared through the intersection, sirens wailing and lights flashing.

  “Nice timing,” Heather said to Sam.

  “Nice driving,” he said.

  They exchanged the kind of glances that had led them to bed in the past few days—but things had changed between them. Maybe for the better.

  “Have you ever been to Bruce Kenwood’s house?” Sam asked Frankie.

  “Yeah, once or twice.”

  “We need to go there now. Can you find it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “After that, we’re going to the airport. You’d better leave town for a while.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Sam was convinced that neither Mink’s gang nor the cops were following them, but he had Heather avoid the freeway and take city streets—La Cienega to Washington, Duquesne to Jefferson—until they picked up the 405 near Marina Del Rey. They exited again on Hawthorne Avenue and headed south toward the oceanfront promontory that was Palos Verdes. On the way, Sam gave Frankie the quick version of how he and Heather had tracked him down.

  “After I found out you two had been locked up together, suddenly the ‘lost at sea’ story didn’t ring true,” Sam said. “The rest was easy to figure out.”

  Especially when he realized Frankie didn’t have the money or the brains to pull off the job himself—but Sam kept that thought to himself.

  “So where does Bruce get his money?” Sam asked. “Palos Verdes is a pricey neighborhood, right?”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “Even the pool boys drive Hummers out there.”

  “And Brucie never got any money from Dad, right?”

  “That’s what he told me,” Frankie said. “Ever since the stepmom came into the picture. But he got almost a million from that insurance settlement when his warehouse burned down.”

  Frankie told Sam that Bruce Kenwood had been a marked man from the day he walked into Lompoc. Few of the inmates knew who his father was, but the stink of privilege, prep school, and wealth was all over him. He was immediately dubbed Preppie, and then Richie Rich, and then Richie Bitch. By then he was literally the bitch of one of the nastiest prisoners in Lompoc, an arson and forgery specialist named Dingo. Bruce never ratted out Dingo for repeatedly raping him, possibly for fear of being murdered, but more likely, Frankie speculated, because the arrangement came to suit him. No one messed with Bruce as long as he was Dingo’s bitch.

  “Did you ever have a go at him?” Sam asked Frankie.

  “Hell, no,” Frankie said. “I wasn’t in there long enough to turn queer. Can’t say the same for Brucie, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe he liked it. How do you put up with that shit night after night unless part of you kind of gets off on it? Bruce is a strange dude, man.”

  “But you got to know him.”

  “We were on the same cell block. I’d, like, talk to him at chow, or, you know, in the exercise yard. Hell, I felt sorry for him—at first. But as long as Dingo was around, he was safe.”

  “What happened to Dingo?”

  “Somebody strangled him in the shower. He was a real prick.”

  “How did Bruce manage after that?”

  “Not too well, I’d guess. But that’s about the time I got out.”

  “How much longer before he contacted you?”

  “A few years, maybe.”

  Frankie said he’d gotten a call from Bruce after the Red Sox won the World
Series. He wanted to meet Frankie for a drink, and Frankie figured it couldn’t hurt. He’d already decided to take the Bugsy Siegel route to the top in L.A. He was going to be a smooth, good-looking crime boss who knew all the Hollywood heavy hitters—and he wanted to know anybody in town who had money, or could pull strings for him. Bruce Kenwood’s dad was a big shot. So what if he’d taken it up the chute in prison? A guy did what he had to do.

  When they met at a bar, Frankie had the creepy feeling that Bruce was hitting on him. Hard to blame the guy, Frankie told Sam, when he saw the kind of shape Frankie was in. He’d been in a couple of movies and was hoping for more work, so he kept his weight down, his reps up, and his hair looking good. The side benefit was that the two-bit mobsters who used to blow him off before he went to prison were starting to treat him with more respect. Frankie felt like a guy on his way up. Maybe Bruce Kenwood could help him.

  They talked about the movies. Frankie was looking at trademarking some kind of nickname—maybe the Satin Latin, or the Hispanic Panic.

  “You know, like Stallone was the Italian Stallion,” Frankie said. Sam glanced over at Heather, who was doing her best to keep from laughing.

  Then Bruce had switched subjects. He wanted to talk about sports. He’d been in the memorabilia business, which hadn’t worked out too well, but he was still looking for a way to make some money off the pros. Frankie asked him why he didn’t just go to work for his dad, but Bruce said that would never happen. Then Bruce said he’d heard that Frankie pumped iron with some of the Dodgers. He asked right away about steroids.

  “Did that piss you off?” Sam asked.

  “Nah,” Frankie said. “Some guys get pretty touchy about that, but I figure, all of them action heroes did it, and they made it big in the movies. I don’t tell the world, but why should I be ashamed? When I show up to collect a debt, nobody asks me if my biceps are real. Which reminds me, I got a bullet hole in my right arm that I should get looked at.”

  “Maybe we can help you out with that,” Sam said. “Tell me more about meeting with Bruce.”

  Frankie and Bruce had gotten to talking about which major leaguers were using illegal substances, and Frankie finally mentioned trying to blackmail Miranda. Bruce got real interested, but Frankie said Miranda couldn’t be blackmailed. He wasn’t afraid of the Commissioner finding out he’d used HGH—they couldn’t test for it, so he thought he was safe. That’s when Bruce said he knew a way they could make a lot more money off Miranda than by blackmailing him. Bruce said it would take him a while to put everything together, but he’d call Frankie when the plan was set—if Frankie was interested in making about $25,000,000.

  “Interested? Shit, yeah, I was interested,” Frankie said.

  Then Frankie read about the sailing accident, and how they couldn’t find Bruce’s body. So much for that, Frankie figured. But he got a call from Bruce a while later, inviting him over to his house. Frankie asked him what the fuck was going on—he was supposed to be dead. That’s what I want people to think, Bruce said.

  Bruce was alive, all right, living in a house in Palos Verdes. When Frankie got there, Bruce poured him some top-shelf booze, rolled some very potent joints, and went through the extortion plan. He’d found some guys to kidnap Miranda’s mom in Venezuela; all Frankie had to do was make the contact with Miranda, and send the letter to Lou Kenwood. Bruce would take care of everything else.

  “How did you know Kenwood had hired me?” Sam asked.

  “Bruce told me.”

  “How did he know?”

  “You got me.”

  Sam again looked at Heather.

  “It wasn’t me,” Heather said. She brushed a strand of blowing hair out of her eyes. “I told you that.”

  “Bruce just said Kenwood hired a dick, and I should take care of it,” Frankie said. “I put out two contracts on you, but I didn’t hire the best people. I figured that would change when I got Kenwood’s money.”

  “Do you think it was O’Brien?” Sam asked Heather. “I found out he got popped once in Southie on a gambling charge.”

  “I don’t know. He always seemed loyal.”

  “Most guys are loyal to whoever pays best,” Frankie said.

  They stayed on Hawthorne as it became a winding residential street in the hills of Palos Verdes. They occasionally caught glimpses of the ocean to the west, but Bruce Kenwood’s house was on a sloping, tree-shaded lot that faced east.

  “Bruce is supposed to be dead,” Sam said. “Who owns the house?”

  “It’s in his girlfriend’s name,” Frankie said.

  “Girlfriend? Who’s that?”

  “Kimberly something. I never met her, but Bruce says they’ve been living together here.”

  That complicated things. Sam had been hoping to surprise Bruce, show a little force, maybe wave his gun around for effect, and scare him into admitting the whole plot and telling them how to find Elena Miranda. There was no telling how much the girlfriend knew, or what she was willing to do to protect Bruce.

  They might both give it up immediately.

  Or they might be armed, desperate, and willing to pull the trigger.

  There was a light shining through the only window that faced the street. Sam told Heather to drive the car up the hill past the house and park it a block away. He didn’t want Bruce to spot them coming; he also didn’t want Heather getting in the way if Bruce got desperate and began shooting, but he knew he couldn’t talk her into staying in the car. He decided to send Frankie to the door. Bruce would have no way of knowing what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He probably wouldn’t be happy to see Frankie show up without an invitation, but he wasn’t likely to shoot him, either.

  In Minneapolis, Bruce Kenwood’s one-story ranch-style house with the three-car garage in front might have sold for $400,000; here, Sam knew it would easily list for over $1,000,000, even without an ocean view. There were nice landscaping touches around the yard—the driveway was lined with purple and white flowers, and there was a two-tiered fountain with a small statue of a nymph inside a brick-lined pool, surrounded by stone pavers and three dwarf orange trees. Yet even in the dark, the property looked run-down; the driveway flowers were wilted or dying, there was no water in the fountain, the lawn hadn’t been mown recently, the oranges on the trees looked diseased, and the stucco on the front of the house was cracked.

  Frankie walked up the sloping driveway while Sam and Heather stood in the shadows against the side of the garage. There was a porch light above the front door, but the nearest streetlight was half a block away, and Bruce didn’t have a yard light. Sam heard Frankie ring the doorbell, wait 20 seconds and ring it again. Then he heard the door open. He cautiously peered around the side of the garage and saw a woman of perhaps 40 standing in the doorway, talking to Frankie. She wore a pair of khaki walking shorts that showed off smooth, tanned legs. Her floral print shirt was untucked, and the tails were tied across her midriff. She had thick, curly brunette hair that hung below her shoulders, and she twirled a few strands of hair in her right hand as she talked to Frankie. She looked safe enough. Sam decided to introduce himself.

  “Come on,” he said to Heather. They walked around the corner of the garage to the front door. He kept his gun in the shoulder holster, but his jacket was open. He could get to it in a second, if necessary.

  “Evening,” Sam said to the woman in the doorway. “Kimberly, is it?”

  “Yes,” she said, in a low, wary voice. “Who are you?”

  “A friend of Frankie’s here. This is Heather Canby. We’re looking for Bruce.”

  “As I told—Frankie, is it?—Bruce is out of town.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Saturday—or was it Sunday? This weekend, sometime.”

  She smiled at Sam, but something was going on. She knew. She was lying for Bruce. She should have been less polite and more freaked out about three strangers showing up at her door at night. She didn’
t ask what they were doing there, or demand to see I.D.’s. Unless Bruce got visits like this all the time, Kimberly was covering something up.

  “I’d offer you something, but it’s really very late,” she said. Her eyes suggested that she was about to go back inside. “Can I tell Bruce why you were here?”

  “It’s about sports collectibles,” Sam said.

  “I’m sure he’ll be interested. He could call you. Do you have a card?”

  Sam did, but he wasn’t going to give her his private investigator’s business card. Heather opened her purse and handed Kimberly her card. Kimberly scanned it quickly.

  “Oh, the Boston Red Sox,” Kimberly said. “Bruce will be sorry he missed you. If that’s all…”

  Now Sam knew she wasn’t being straight with them. Bruce Kenwood wouldn’t live with a woman for any length of time and not tell her—if she didn’t figure it out for herself—that he was the son of the owner of the Red Sox. But Sam wasn’t going to force himself into her home at gunpoint and make her tell him where Bruce was. There had to be some other way.

  He looked at Heather and shrugged.

  “Guess we’re done here,” he said.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Kimberly.”

  Heather reached out to shake hands. She seemed to be examining the bone structure of Kimberly’s hand, turning it sideways and rolling the fingers in her palm. Then she pulled Kimberly forward suddenly, reached up with her left hand and grabbed Kimberly’s hair. With a downward yank, the wig came off.

  “Bitch!” said the man, who was wearing a tight nylon skullcap under the wig. His voice dropped to a lower register.

  “Jesus Christ!” Frankie said. “Bruce?”

  Bruce Kenwood pulled his hand free of Heather’s and tried to get inside the house, but Sam kicked the door shut as Bruce tried to slip through it. His hand was caught in the door frame, and he screamed in pain. Sam grabbed Bruce by the chin and pushed it upward so the top of his head was pressed against the house. The Adam’s apple and razor stubble were now apparent. Sam slammed his fist into Bruce’s stomach; he doubled over, moaning and gasping for air. Frankie got in a punch with his good arm, too, but Sam pushed him back, opened the front door and shoved Bruce inside. They followed him in.