Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  He slid off his slacks and folded them over the back of a chair.

  It's the goddamn sobriety, she realized. Munch and all her A.A., Higher Power, there's-another-way-to-go bullshit had totally infected her system and ruined her for the life. She didn't enjoy the dope. Drinking was a disaster, and now turning a simple trick wasn't going to fly either. Jesus, what a predicament.

  She pulled her blouse shut, reached behind her, and grabbed the money

  "Here," she said, holding it out to John. She saw that he already had a hard-on, bless his heart.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I just can't I'm truly sorry."

  John pressed the money back to her. "That's okay," he said. "Keep it. It was good just to see you again."

  She felt slow hot tears roll down her cheeks. Wasn't he just the nicest man? She was tempted to do him anyway, but why spoil the moment?

  "Thanks," she said as he pulled his clothes back on. "I'll pay you back one day."

  "Don't worry about it." Before he walked out the door he paused and turned around. "Good luck," he said.

  She watched him pull away in his brown 280Z and, for the first time ever, wondered what his life was beyond their encounters. That's the problem, she realized. Everybody's becoming real people around me.

  After she shut the door, she picked up the phone book and looked up Alcoholics Anonymous. She dialed the number and told the woman who answered that she needed a meeting.

  "Where are you?" the woman asked.

  "Venice."

  "There's an Alano Clubhouse on Centinela and Washington. They have a meeting at noon. You need someone to come pick you up?"

  "You'd do that?" Ellen asked.

  "Sure. Give me your address."

  "The Rose Motel on Lincoln Boulevard."

  "Oh, yeah," the woman said, chuckling. "I know right where that is."

  "Room Three," Ellen said.

  "The corner unit?" the woman asked.

  "My," Ellen said, "you do know your way around."

  "I paid my dues. Listen, the only way this is going to work is if you don't drink or use until they get there."

  "Don't worry."' Ellen said. "I'm all through with that."

  "Right," the woman said. "I've heard that before, too."

  Ellen hung up the phone thinking she'd just show her what she was capable of once she set her mind to something. Then she laughed. Did that reverse psychology shit work with most people?

  CHAPTER 22

  Traffic control reported an accident on the 405 near the airport, so Mace and Cassiletti drove to El Segundo by an alternate route that took them in the back way through Playa Del Rey. El Segundo—also referred to as El Stinko—was a coastal community with relatively low housing costs. The reason for the exceptional values was the town's proximity to the Hyperion Treatment Plant on the north and the Chevron refinery directly south. In fact, the town was named for the refinery. Originally it was La Segunda, meaning "the Second" because it was Standard Oil's second refinery in California. Over time, the name switched to the male gender: El Segundo. Mace had learned all this from a talkative real-estate agent he and Caroline had spent a long weekend with back in January. The idea had been to buy a home big enough for all of them. Caroline, himself, his dad, and the dogs.

  At the top of Pershing, the domed roof of Hyperion Treatment Plant could be seen. The factory lay on the water's edge to the north, separating solids from outgoing sewage. The foul cesspool smell assaulted them as they turned on Imperial Highway and headed east.

  "Jeez," Cassiletti said, wrinkling his nose. "Can you imagine working with that all day?"

  "Someone's got to do it," Mace said.

  The detectives' destination was the massive Aerospace Corporation complex at the edge of town. Mace turned down Main Street, driving past the high school and city hall. Banners celebrating the Olympics were strung across the street. At El Segundo Boulevard he turned left. The Erector set structure of the Chevron refinery loomed in the background. Odious gray smoke poured from the stacks of derrick-encased cokers, making their own foul contribution to the city's bouquet of methane, hydrogen sulfates, and petroleum by-products. The refinery also provided fifteen hundred jobs, built parks, maintained the civic center, and made generous donations to the local schools.

  Actually, Mace knew that despite the occasional assault on the olfactory senses, El Segundo was a decent place to live, to raise a family. He'd learned that from the city's chief of police, who owned one of the two-story Spanish-style homes in town. In fact, the majority of the department chose to live nearby.

  That sold him more than the agent with the bright green blazer and nonstop pitch. The woman had given even Caroline a headache. Then he'd picked a stupid argument about nothing important, and the house hunt had been called off. He'd give anything to recall half the hurtful words he'd thrown at her. She knew Digger hurt him, but he should have been man enough to keep his feelings to himself. People died. No one knew that better than he.

  "So what does this guy do?" Cassiletti asked while they waited for the light to change.

  "I'll have him give you a demonstration," Mace said.

  They turned down Douglas and stopped at Gatehouse C. A uniformed guard emerged from the booth. "Can I help you, sirs?" he asked.

  Mace handed over his badge and identification. "We're here to see Dr. Rudy Roberts. Building 107."

  "Just a minute, sir." The guard returned to his booth with Mace's ID. They watched him make a call, nod, then reemerge with a clipboard. The guard returned Mace's badge and walked to the rear of the detective's unmarked car, where he wrote down the license plate number. Then he consulted his watch and made yet another notation.

  "Pretty intense security," Cassiletti said.

  Mace smiled. just wait."

  The guard lifted the barrier gate. Mace pulled into the parking lot, finding a space marked VISITOR. Before leaving the car, he folded his police ID over his front pocket so that the badge was clearly visible. Cassiletti followed suit. Mace opened the trunk and retrieved three boxes of videotapes, which he transferred into a brown-paper lunch sack. They walked over to the building marked 107. The door was locked. Mace rang the buzzer. A tall, good-looking man wearing a suit came to the foyer. When he saw Mace, he smiled and opened the door for them.

  "Hey, Dr. Rudy," Mace said, extending his hand. "Thanks for seeing us. This is my partner, Tony Cassiletti. "

  "Detective," the man said, sizing Cassiletti up with friendly, but intense blue eyes.

  "Call him Tiger." Mace clapped the big man on the back. "This here is Dr. Rudy Roberts. The Department of Justice's answer to that guy in the James Bond movies who makes all the gadgets for 007."

  "Q?" Cassiletti said.

  "Please," Roberts said, "I'm basically an engineer."

  "Yeah," Mace said, "that's right. Like George Foreman is basically a boxer. "

  "What do you do here?" Cassiletti asked.

  Roberts hesitated for a moment before answering. "We do support research for various federal agencies. " He turned to Mace. "So, you have some videotapes you want me to look at?"

  Mace handed over the brown-paper sack. Roberts pulled out the three videotape boxes. "Are these the originals?" he asked.

  "No," Mace said. "But these haven't been played since I made the copies."

  "All right," Roberts said. "We'll see what we can do. What are you looking for?"

  "The first two videos are from surveillance cameras mounted on fifteen-foot poles at the entrance of an apartment building. I've got some people in the back of a limo that I want to identify. "

  "And the other?" Roberts asked, seemingly weighing the third videotape in his hand.

  "Pretty poor quality on that one, I'm afraid," Mace said. "It's from a Bank of America roof camera. It was pointed down a dark alley behind the apartment building where some homicides occurred. The other videos are from that building's security cameras."

  "Time-lapse?" Ro
berts asked.

  "Yeah, but then it switched to real-time when the gate's keypad was operated. The cameras were positioned at either side of the entrance driveway."

  "Okay, good. What about the bank video?"

  "Time-lapse and like I said, the alley was dark. You can just make out a figure hopping the back wall. According to the time line of events, it was after the homicide. Anything you can give me on that guy would be great."

  "We'll see what we can do," Roberts said. He handed each of the detectives plastic clip-on visitor badges. "Let's go to the lab. I'll load these on to the computer and we'll see if we can find you any valuable information?

  They followed Roberts out of Building 107 and deeper into the complex. The concrete paths were all clean and the landscaping well maintained. None of the buildings they passed had any identification on it other than a numerical designation. "It's pretty amazing what a computer can do with a blurry picture," Mace told Cassiletti. "Just like you see in the spy movies. All that CIA stuff."

  Roberts slowed his pace and turned to face the two detectives. "We taught them everything they know," he said. Mace winked at Cassiletti.

  "Rudy," he said. "You ever hear about an operation called Southern Air Transport?"

  Again, the engineers pace faltered, but this time he didn't turn around. "I can neither confirm nor deny knowledge of that operation," he said.

  "So it's like that," Mace said.

  "Like I said," Roberts repeated, "we do support research for various federal entities." They were crossing an immaculate courtyard. Concrete benches sat between planters full of maple and oak trees.

  Mace directed Cassiletti's attention to a three-story building surrounded by an electric fence. Then he nodded to the louvered air vents beneath the benches. "That's actually a five-story building," he whispered.

  Cassiletti nodded, his eyes wide.

  A Chevy Suburban pulled in front of the building. Two beefy men emerged and studied their surroundings with somber faces. Mace would have pointed out the gun turrets in the Suburban, but the men were staring at him and Cassiletti.

  "How's it going?" Mace said.

  "Just great," the man who had been driving answered. His tone was courteous, but his expression was grim. They faced off for another few seconds. God, Mace wondered, do these guys ever blink ?

  When they were out of earshot, Cassiletti asked, "Spooks?"

  "I'd say so," Mace answered dryly.

  They arrived at another group of buildings. An armed guard checked their badges, then opened the door for them. The hallway they entered was something out of a futuristic novel. Steel casing, eight inches wide and two inches deep ran down the center of the ceiling. Fuse-box-looking steel boxes were attached at various junctions.

  "What's all this?" Cassiletti asked.

  "Cable," Roberts said.

  "And these?" Cassiletti asked, pointing to an overhead shower nozzle.

  "In case of chemical spill," Roberts said. "We also have eyewash stations, and self-contained breathing apparatus."

  Mace stared through the thick glass window at the laboratory on his right. Technicians were loading petri dishes into some sort of oven. They wore protective gear over their eyes, face masks, and heavy gloves. He didn't want to know. He was just grateful for the airlock separating them.

  Roberts turned into a room full of computer equipment, several large television monitors, and stacked audio equipment. He stuck the Gower apartment building video into a VCR and turned on his computer. "This won't take very long, he said. "First I need to load the tapes into my computer system. Once they're there I can play around with the images."

  "Like a TV, right?" Cassiletti asked. "You adjust the tint and contrast. "

  "A little more than that," Roberts said, his eyes brighter now that he was back in his environment of choice. "You know what a pixel is?"

  "Yeah, it's like a little dot that's part of a picture."

  "Yes. A typical broadcast television picture has six hundred and forty by four hundred and eighty pixels. With videotape surveillance video, you have even less resolution. However, we have ways to improve on that. Every pixel stores information. 'When you have a series of pictures of the same object—a vehicle, for instance, driving down the road—each frame has its own pixels, and each of those pixels has slightly different information. By superimposing the pixels of the same vehicle from a series of frames, we come up with a much more detailed image."

  "You see?" Mace asked, nudging his partner.

  The beginning of the surveillance video appeared on Roberts's screen. He rolled his mouse on its pad and the video played.

  "Where do you want me to start?"

  Mace consulted his notes. "Eleven twenty-nine."

  Roberts split the image on his screen and advanced both videos to the specified time. The picture of the limo appeared. "It's pretty murky," he said. "I don't know how much I can do with this." They watched and listened as he demonstrated how he could eliminate shadows, suppress glints, adjust contrasts and tones, and eliminate background. The face in the limo refused to materialize. After thirty minutes, he had to admit defeat. "All right," he said. "Let's try the bank tape." He repeated his earlier procedure, and soon the footage of the dark alley appeared on the screen.

  "There," Mace said, pointing. A dark figure had appeared at the top of the apartment complex's cinder-block rear wall. The next frame showed the figure on the ground.

  "Is that your guy?" Roberts asked, his fingers busy on his controls.

  "Yeah, pretty poor image."

  '"There's a few more things we can try here. The bank uses infrared cameras on their rooftop jobs. I've created a few image-contrasting algorithms that will bring out thermal characteristics not visible to the naked eye."

  "In English?" Mace said.

  "The CCD array collects in the infrared spectrum . . ."

  Roberts paused, looked from one detective to the other, and said, "Uh, heat registers as a color."

  "How does that help us?" Mace asked.

  "Let's find out." Roberts worked his magic and soon the same scene had color. The face and hands of the figure took on a reddish hue. "We're reading skin temperature. This guy must have been pretty worked up." He used his pointer on the screen to advance the time-lapse photos.

  "What are we looking at now?" Mace asked.

  "The guy moved his hand to his mouth," Roberts said, studying the screen intently. "Isn't your suspect bald?"

  "Yeah, you saw his picture in the other tape."

  "What we're looking at here," Roberts said, pointing to the red man's head, "is not a bald head, or it would be the same color as the face. Hair acts as insulation."

  "Maybe he's got a hat on," Cassiletti said.

  "l don't think so," Roberts said. "See the scalp line? The ears? N0, this is hair."

  "We've got another suspect—possible accomplice," Mace said. "He might be a CIA operative."

  "Hmm," Roberts said, rolling his mouse again. "Now what would a mostly hollow head look like?"

  * * *

  Raleigh used a pay phone to call in. That day's code was a beep and screech that sounded like a fax line. Raleigh pressed 8, 5, 6, then the star key. A woman's voice came on asking what extension he wanted.

  "Two bravo echo six," Raleigh replied.

  "Confirmed," she said. "Please hold."

  Seconds later another voice took over—this time a man's. "We've been unable to locate the woman," he said. "Her full name is Ellen Summers. Hard copy to follow. The LAPD is also looking for her. "

  Raleigh's stomach muscles contracted painfully. She could blow everything. "What else have they got?" He popped an Altoid in his mouth and followed that with an amphetamine. "The lead detective has been ordered to stand down from his investigation. His reports will be in the packet. Frankly, his case is very damaging. He knows about the business in Mexico. He recovered pieces of medical tape off of a murder victim that they've conclusively linked to the Band-Aid Ki1ler."
r />   "Son of a bitch," Raleigh said.

  "You've been sloppy. This can't go on."

  "I'll take care of it, " Raleigh said.

  "We've already confiscated the physical evidence," the man said. "But you better hope we find that witness before the cops do."

  "Any leads?"

  "She's back in town. It's all in the reports."

  "I'll pick them up now," Raleigh said.

  "What about Gameboy? "

  "He's going to bring me a sample. I told him to make it happen, and it will. You've got my personal guarantee on that."

  "His compensation requests have been approved."

  "I'll pass that on." Raleigh looked at his own dilapidated Vega and felt a fresh surge of resentment. Where was the justice in this world? The plan was that when the deal finally went down, Victor would be keeping the monies paid for the plutonium. Which was only fair, the Romanian had reasoned, and no skin off of America's vast back. Victor's participation in the international sting operation ensured that the United States government would be able to confiscate the radioactive contraband, thereby preventing it from falling into the hands of terrorists or fanatics.

  Raleigh knew Victor's motives were far from altruistic. After slipping Victor an opiate/ amphetamine cocktail back in December, the Romanian had let slip all the other extenuating circumstances that would make his return to his homeland once the Olympics had concluded a most unpleasant one. But that wasn't going to happen. The United States was going to provide him with a new identity and history, and he would quietly slip away under the cover of his new life.

  After hanging up, Raleigh let his head rest on the Plexiglas half wall of the pay phone. What happened to the good old days, when a mission involved a simple in and out? Target, assignment, execution. Bing, bang, boom. Now you had to play cutesy with every mom-and-pop organization, fucking keystone cops. Fucking Democrats—that's when it started. He should have quit then. Seen the writing on the wall when that goddamn peanut farmer took the helm. Jimmy Carter and his cutbacks sent the intelligence community back to the Stone Age. Two and a half years of Reagan was only just starting to repair the damage. A leader needed to be strong, like Bismarck. Power is not achieved with speeches. It is bought with "Blood and Iron" warfare and military. Great leaders take whatever action is necessary whether or not it might be considered legal or ethical by the day's standards.