A final shot depicted the subject leaving the lobby. As before, he seemed in no hurry, strolling to the entrance and disappearing.
Barker asked Krachik to make copies of the tapes. “All of them. We’ll want to send them to the lab and have them enhanced.”
“I already told him to do that,” Hogan said.
Again Barker ignored him. With luck, the enhancement just might give them a sharper impression of the guy’s features. The result would be better than nothing, certainly.
Finally, Barker thanked Krachik and stepped away from the console. He told Spinelli to wait for a set of tapes, and to be sure to get the inventory of the victim’s jewelry from Dana Laramie. He then left the room.
“Barker.”
He turned to see Hogan approach.
“Does Kelly know you’re here?”
“Sure he does. You need help, so here I am.”
Hogan seemed to think that over. As Barker had expected, the lieutenant wasn’t likely to turn away an experienced detective. Even one with Barker’s reputation.
“I understand you talked with the secretary and the bodyguard,” Hogan said.
“Yeah, so?”
“So you should have cleared that with me first. I’m leading this investigation, and it doesn’t help to have people running off in all directions.”
Barker told himself to stay cool. “I was just doing what I could, Lieutenant.”
“Then keep in mind that this case is the biggest thing the department has had in years, and it’s my responsibility to see it’s run properly. The only reason I’d let you and Spinelli work on it is because I need extra hands. I want the two of you to concentrate on the robbery angle.”
“The robbery angle?”
“Correct. What we have here is a double homicide, but the motive was obviously robbery.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
Hogan’s upper lip curled. “Look, Barker, I been working homicide a long time. One thing I learned is, if a motive isn’t sex or jealousy, it’s money. The jewelry in that box could’ve been worth as much as a million bucks. And that’s enough to give any mutt a hard-on. You follow me?”
“Sure. But this guy was a lot more sophisticated than the average booster. He had to be, if he could pass himself off as a legitimate employee of WNEW.”
“No question. So what I want you and Spinelli to do is see if you can turn up something about him from fences or street sources.”
“Isn’t that a job for the Robbery Squad?”
“They’ll be working on it too. I’m setting up a task force, and like I said, I’ll take all the help I can get. Even you two.”
“Okay, but—”
“No buts. I’ve got the videotape and three eyewitnesses, and that’ll make it easy to get a real good rendering of the perp’s face. When that goes out in an APB, I expect to have plenty of leads. Meantime, get going. Anything you come up with, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s important, you report it to me. That goes for both you and Spinelli. You got that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t try to be a hero, Barker. I wouldn’t want to have to complain to Kelly. You’ve already got a couple strikes against you. One more and you could be walking a beat in the Lincoln Tunnel.”
Barker clamped his jaw shut.
Apparently Hogan misread the silence. As if satisfied that he’d made his point, he nodded and strode away.
Barker watched him go, thinking, Christ, the shit you have to put up with.
He took an elevator to the lobby, where the situation was just as chaotic as it had been earlier. Angry guests, and police trying to keep order.
Several of the cops were peering out through the entrance doors, craning their necks. Moving closer, Barker saw they were looking at a trio of men who were standing outside, conducting an impromptu press conference for the benefit of the reporters and TV cameramen.
The men were the NYPD’s top brass. The commissioner himself was in the center, doing the talking. Flanking him were the chief of police on one side and the chief of detectives on the other. The media were sucking up every word, holding out microphones and shooting footage.
Behind the reporters and the camera operators was the crowd of spectators, held back by cops manning sawhorses. The gawkers were pressing and pushing for position, and there seemed to be even more of them now than when Barker had entered the hotel. People and official vehicles had turned the area into a mob scene.
The PC was blathering on, but with all the ambient noise it was hard to understand what he was saying. Still, the gist was clear enough: “. . . shocking and horrendous crime . . . cannot be allowed to go unpunished . . . will do everything in our power to track down . . . this great city will not tolerate . . .”
Standard crapola, Barker thought. Still, it wasn’t surprising that the three of them had shown up so quickly. They were politicians essentially as much as they were police officials. A homicide case couldn’t be more high-profile than this one, and that meant they’d get face time on TV. So they’d rushed to the scene and begun spouting platitudes.
But after the speeches were over, it would be up to the guys in the trenches, the ordinary detectives, to do the grunt work. They were the ones who might clear the case. And all the while they’d have to deal with politics themselves, as people like Hogan jockeyed to take credit, to use this as a stepping-stone for advancing their careers, simultaneously making sure to cover their asses.
Nevertheless, that wasn’t what stuck in Barker’s craw. What bothered him most was that flicker on the security videotape, when the killer had glanced up at the camera and grinned.
Beautiful, wasn’t it? Steal people’s lives and their property, and then sneer at the police. It would be good to jam those shiny white teeth down the bastard’s throat.
But where was he now? Still in New York, or had he gone somewhere else, now that his work was done?
5.
Mongo tooled the Toyota up the Pacific Coast Highway and turned off onto a driveway near Zuma Beach. After covering a hundred yards of the narrow, winding blacktop, he stopped before a wrought-iron gate and sent a signal from a remote. When the gate swung open, he drove through to a small building and parked beside it. Carrying his luggage, he went to the door and unlocked it.
This was a guest cottage, part of an estate whose owner lived in LA and rarely visited. Most of the time nobody came out here except the gardeners and Mongo, and even he was often away on business. The rent was expensive, but so what.
Before going inside, he looked back down toward the road. Cars and trucks were zipping along it, as they did at all hours of the day and night. Apparently he hadn’t been followed, although he had no reason to think he might have been. Making sure was a habit.
As he stood there, his gaze took in the packed-together beach houses that bordered the far side of the highway with the sea just beyond them. On the horizon the sun was setting, a red ball that cast a sparkling reflection on the water. Nice picture. Malibu was a great place to live.
Once inside, he locked the door behind him and turned on the lights. The place was neat and tidy, just as he’d left it. Keeping it that way was another habit, one he’d picked up when he was a guest in Q.
It had been a busy day, but he wasn’t at all tired. He took off his jacket and tie and dropped them off in the bedroom along with his bag and attaché case and then went into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and chose a joint from a plastic box.
Now for some entertainment. He flopped into his favorite chair, turned on the TV, and set fire to the weed.
CNN had the story. He inhaled deeply and watched as a blonde bimbo with big eyes babbled excitedly.
“. . . was one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars. Perhaps best known for her role in Forbidden Love, she was adored by her millions of fans. Now it’s said that her ne
w picture, Hot Cargo, will set attendance records.”
Sure it will, Mongo thought. That’s what publicity can do for you. Want big sales at the box office? Get yourself shot. Works every time.
“Later tonight,” the bimbo went on, “Anderson Cooper will do a special interview with Terry Falcon, Miss Delure’s costar in Hot Cargo. Terry is said to be in a state of shock, but he’s agreed to talk about working with Catherine, and about the picture. He feels she would want him to do that.”
Mongo smiled. That Terry was a noble guy, wasn’t he? Of course plugging the film and getting his mug on TV wouldn’t have anything to do with it.
The blonde went on flapping her mouth, but Mongo had heard enough. He took another drag and switched channels.
KCAL was covering it as well. With its own straw-head. “And now,” she was saying, “we take you to the scene of the crime, the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, where earlier today the city’s top law enforcement officials spoke about the case.”
Cut to videotape. A huge mob of people and clusters of cars and trucks were in front of the hotel. On the steps leading to the entrance, a trio of serious-looking men stood speaking into microphones held by TV reporters.
Mongo laughed out loud. The Three Stooges, for Christ’s sake. Larry, Moe, and Curly. They must have rushed to the scene like flies zooming in on a turd. And now they were taking turns telling the world how they would track down the perpetrator of this horrifying deed.
A reporter asked what steps were being taken. The one identified as the police commissioner replied: “A large task force will be assigned to the case. We won’t rest until the assailant is brought to justice. He will be punished to the full extent of the law, which is what he deserves.”
Wrong, Mongo thought. What I deserve is a bonus, for doing a terrific job. He turned off the set and blew out a stream of smoke.
By now he was feeling totally relaxed. The joint was Jamaican Red, and it produced a very pleasant buzz. Nowadays you could go to a head shop and find dozens of varieties, many with goofy-ass names. Midnight Express. Wild ’n’ Wicked. Mendocino Magic. But that was just marketing. When it came to quality, the Red was as good as it got.
Mongo should know. He’d used almost everything there was at one time or another. And had done a little dealing, too. Although not in the conventional sense.
It was after he’d been sent up for killing a clerk during a convenience store robbery, when he was still young and dumb. The guy had resisted, so naturally Mongo shot him.
Unfortunately, a patrol car had been cruising by at the time, and the cops heard the shot and ran into the store. Mongo wanted to shoot it out, but his pistol had jammed. He threw it aside and tried to fight off the cops. They beat the shit out of him with their truncheons and took him to the can.
He was arraigned the next day, and under California law the killing was defined as first-degree murder because it had been committed with a firearm in the course of a robbery. That was the murder-felony rule, and it meant Mongo could get twenty-five to life if convicted—or what the prosecutors called Nopo, which stood for life without the possibility of parole. Shit, he could even be sentenced to death.
But he was in luck. A weasel of a lawyer named Harold Strunk took the case pro bono. From what Mongo could gather, the lawyer had volunteered his services in an effort to cast a favorable light on his own unsavory reputation.
Strunk claimed Mongo had attempted to rob the store not for money but for food. The poor boy was desperately hungry, the lawyer argued, and the shooting was an accident. A sympathetic judge bought it, and the charge was reduced to voluntary manslaughter. So even though Mongo was tried and convicted, he wound up with a sentence of only five to ten years.
“I hope,” the judge had said, “this will teach you a lesson.”
It did. In fact, the lesson was one Mongo would always remember: never use inferior equipment. The pistol had been cheap junk, an automatic that froze after he fired the shot that killed the clerk. He resolved that from then on, whenever he needed a piece he’d be careful to make it a good one. A Smith, say, or a Colt. Glocks and Berettas were okay, too.
After the trial he was shackled and stuffed into a bus, along with a mixed bag of white, black, and brown losers, for the long trip north. It seemed to take forever, but at last the bus reached the sprawling facility that overlooked San Francisco Bay. Mongo was processed and assigned to a cell in San Quentin’s South Block.
On his first day in the yard, he was approached by an enormous black man who wore an Afro and sported gold teeth.
The spade leered down at him. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Mongo. What’s yours?”
“You be a wiseass, askin’ me that?”
“No sir. I meant no disrespect.”
“Ah, that’s good. ’Cause if you diss me, I’ll squash your ass like a bug. People call me the Count. That’s ’cause in here, I be the one with the power. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes sir.”
“I like you, boy. You pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“You gone belong to me, hear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Tonight, before chow, you meet me in the shower. Got that?”
“Yes sir.”
Mongo drifted away. Later, he asked his cellmate about the Count.
The cellmate was an old man named Charley who was doing fifty to life for committing a series of sexual assaults. He chuckled. “The Count picked you out, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Ain’t surprising. He likes young meat. ’Specially ones like you with muscles. But you better watch yourself. Anybody don’t do what he says, he cuts ’em. You seen that hair?”
“What about it?”
“He keeps a shank in it. The COs know it, but they don’t do nothing about it. Anybody gives him shit, he’ll make ’em bleed. So take care, sonny.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
The shower room was hot and steamy, filled with naked men who were talking and laughing and shouting as they soaped and rinsed their bodies under the pounding streams of water. Most of them had decorated their hides with homemade tattoos. On some, every square inch of skin bore mottoes or weird designs or women’s names. A few also had swastikas.
The Count beckoned to Mongo. “You come over here with me, boy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We gon’ get acquainted. That means you suck my cock.”
“Yes, sir. But would it be all right if we waited till we were alone?”
“What’s a matter, you shy?”
“Yes sir. Kind of.”
The big man laughed, a low rumble that came up from his belly. “Yeah, all right. Just stay right here till these mothafuckers clear out.”
A few minutes later a bell rang. The bathers departed, still jabbering and carrying on as they headed for the room where they’d left their clothing.
More minutes passed, until only Mongo and the Count remained in the room. It was quiet then, except for the sound of water dripping from the showerheads and splattering on the wet floor.
A heavy hand gripped Mongo’s shoulder. “Now then, boy,” the Count said. He moved his feet apart. “Get on down there.”
Mongo sank to his knees. There in front of his face was the biggest dick he’d ever seen. And certainly the blackest. It was standing straight up and quivering, as if it had a life of its own. Beneath the dick was a large, hairy scrotum.
The Count’s voice grew hoarse. “Come on, boy. Suck that thing.”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, come on, goddamn it. Suck it!”
Mongo wrapped his left hand around the huge penis and gripped it tightly. He moved his mouth toward it and took a deep breath. Then with all his strength he drove his right fist up into the scrotum.
The Co
unt screamed and doubled over, grabbing his crotch.
Mongo leaped to his feet and gripped the big man’s head with both hands. He heaved, and at the same time kicked the other’s feet out from under him. The Count went over backward, sailing through the air until his skull slammed against the cement floor. The sound when it hit was like a melon bursting.
Mongo stood over the massive body, watching it shudder convulsively. The Count’s eyes had rolled back in his head, and spittle frothed on his lips. A trickle of blood flowed from an ear. A moment later, he was completely still.
Mongo felt around in the Afro and pulled out the shank. It was a slim piece of metal, razor sharp at one end and with a taped handle at the other. Carrying it, he walked out of the shower room, toweled down, and put on his orange shirt and pants. He saw that as he’d intended, several of the cons were eyeing him curiously. Again a bell rang, and he followed the others out of the area.
When the Count’s corpse was discovered, an investigation was held. The COs agreed that he’d slipped in the shower and died of a fractured skull. They wrote that in their report, and the warden signed off on it.
But the word got around, and it earned Mongo respect. The Latinos were glad to see the big man gone, and so were the whites. The blacks didn’t seem to care, so they too must have had enough of him.
After that Mongo steered clear of the gangs and mostly kept to himself. He used the shank only once, when a jealous con tried to stab him with a spike made from a toothbrush handle. Mongo decked the guy and carved an M in the center of his forehead with the shank. From that point on, nobody messed with him.
As for the dealing, it worked in a roundabout way. Juanita, his girlfriend, sent him packages containing items such as toothpaste and deodorant and mints. The packages were opened and the contents inspected, and then they were passed on to Mongo. What the COs never suspected was that the wrapping paper was actually two sheets pressed together, with a C-note between them.
Mongo was always delighted to hear from her. Inmates were paid a few cents an hour for their work inside and denied the right to have money in any meaningful amount. So the packages put him way ahead of the others.
The Big Hit Page 4