“He was going to be a stuntman, like his mother,” Hugo said. “Well, she was a stuntwoman, but you know what I mean.”
And so it went. I told the story, and Hugo would jump in with the details. After a few minutes, he asked Diana to help him sit up, and by the time I got to Donny Hovsepian’s arrest, Hugo had transformed from an inert gray lump to an excited, animated child.
“That was a wonderful story,” his mother said, her eyes wet to the brim, but not quite spilling over. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
At 8:30 Diana called a curfew. I took Hugo’s hand. It was cold and his grip was weak. “I don’t want to hurt you like I did the last time,” he said. “So you’re getting the wimpy handshake.” His eyes were drooping and he closed them as Diana lowered the head of his bed. I said good night to his mother, and he was asleep before Diana and I left the room.
We took the elevator down to the lobby. “Are you hungry?” she said.
“Starved.”
“What kind of food are you in the mood for?” she said.
Whatever you have in your refrigerator, I thought. But I knew better than to say it. My wife had passed away less than seven months ago. My brother was in deep shit, and my father needed my help digging him out. And my partner, my boss, and the Governor of California needed me to solve the crime of the century. The last thing I needed at this point in my life was a serious relationship with Diana Trantanella. Then she repeated the question.
“Earth to Mike, I asked what kind of food you’re in the mood for.”
“Whatever you have in your refrigerator,” I heard myself say out loud.
And then I felt her arms around my neck and her lips gently kissing mine. “Are you sure?” she said.
“No,” I said. “Maybe if you kissed me again.”
She did. It was long and deep and went directly to every pleasure center in my body. “I’m sure,” I said.
Twenty minutes later we were in her bedroom furiously peeling each other’s clothes off. I’d have to call Big Jim in the morning and thank him for meddling in my life.
CHAPTER 74
Diana and I made love, raided her refrigerator, made love again, watched Letterman up to the Top Ten List, and then, despite my advancing years and lack of sleep, managed to make love a third time. She was impressed. I was even more impressed.
“Don’t get used to it,” I said. “It’s like a parlor trick. I never do it again for the same crowd.”
“What about your dog?” she said, suddenly sitting up.
“Andre can do it six times a night,” I said. “But then he doesn’t call you in the morning. The French can be so rude.”
She laughed. “I mean, don’t you have to go home and walk him?”
“If I did, you and I would be in my bed right now, and Andre would be trying to wedge his way between us. My friend Kemp is dogsitting.”
She turned over on one elbow and ran a pearly pink fingernail from my navel to my left nipple, which apparently was not too tired to rise to the occasion. Then she worked her way directly over my heart and slowly began stirring up a patch of chest hair. “Did you plan that in advance because you thought you might not be going home tonight?”
“I’ve been putting in twenty-five-hour days lately,” I said. “So it’s not fair to leave Andre sitting around the house with his legs crossed.”
“What crime are you trying to solve?”
There was such a delightful ingenuousness to the way she asked the question. Like, What color will you be painting the ceiling, Mr. Michelangelo?
“I’m not supposed to give you the details. You could be a security risk.”
“You can frisk me if you want,” she said, sliding her soft, warm body on top of mine and slowly kissing me on the eyes, the nose, and finally the lips.
I told her everything. I figured if Terry could tell Marilyn, which I knew for a fact he did, it would be only fair for me to have someone’s ear. Although her ear wasn’t what I focused on as I unfolded the gruesome details of the past eleven days. Besides, what could the Department do to me if they found out I broke the rules while I was naked in bed with a beautiful blonde? If they drummed cops out of the corps for pillow talk, the city of Los Angeles would be totally without police protection.
I slept till dawn, then drove home to change. Kemp’s truck was parked outside my house. He was in the living room with Andre, who bounded across the room and had his paws on my shoulders before I could close the door.
“Good morning, Detective,” Kemp said. “You look like you had a rough night keeping the peace.”
“I was doing some serious undercover work. Thank you for taking care of Andre. Did the L.A. Times get delivered? It wasn’t on the front step.”
“I was reading it in the bathroom. I’ll get it.” He returned a minute later with the dog-eared sections in a bulky pile. “Sports section is a little wet,” he said, “but it’s only water.”
The lead story was the Lamaar plane crash, which was reported as suspicious and under investigation. There was a picture of Amy and two of the other victims on Page One. I shuffled through the rest of the sections till I found the Classifieds.
Kemp was leaning over my shoulder. “Looking for a job?” he asked.
“No. I’m looking for a handyman who can mind his own business.”
I turned the pages till I got to the Personals. Kemp grinned, but didn’t say anything. I ran my finger down the columns until I found it. The family of the late Buddy Longo thanks his friends and co-workers for their love and support during our time of grief.
There was no turning back now. I crumpled the entire section into a ball and threw it across the room.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for in the Personals,” Kemp said, “but I’ll give you the same advice my father gave me. Even though I never paid much attention to it.”
“Lay it on me. I need all the advice I can get.”
Kemp bent down, began scratching Andre behind the ears, looked up at me, and said, “If it’s got tits or wheels, it’s gonna give you problems.”
CHAPTER 75
Ike Rose was a stubborn son of a bitch. Despite the fact that he had to be within arm’s reach of a telephone so he could accept the ransom call, he refused to stay in one place. “I’m not rescheduling my life,” he said. “My phone can follow me wherever I am. I do it every day. Call Forwarding.”
He had an early breakfast meeting at The Four Seasons with a couple of investment bankers, stopped at his Burbank office for an hour, then drove down to Familyland where he was shooting a promotional video for the park.
Terry and I were part of the entourage that followed him, which also included Garet Church, his partner Henry Collins, and a four-man electronic surveillance team, who had forwarded Ike’s home, office, and cell phones to a single black handset.
When we got to Familyland, Ike and the Feds went to The Rainbow’s End, the location where the video was being shot. Terry and I were politely asked to wait in Brian Curry’s office till it was time for Ike to head to his next gig. “No sense in everybody cluttering up the same space,” Agent Church told us.
“I wonder if he wants us to just sit here and do nothing,” Terry said, when we got to Brian’s office, “or if we should go fuck ourselves while we’re waiting.”
We speculated on what kind of person it took to mastermind a crime like this one. “Speaking of masterminds,” Terry said, “it’s been five days since Judy Kaiser was killed. Somebody smart is managing to keep it out of the papers.”
“You remember Ike’s assistant, Richard Villante?” Brian said, clearing his throat hard on assistant. “Ike was darn lucky to find an assistant who graduated top of his class at Yale Law. Richard has an uncanny ability for keeping things out of the news.”
But no number of lawyers could keep the Lamaar plane crash out of the news. We flipped from CNN to MSNBC to Fox. None of them referred to it as an accident. The theories and hypotheses all focused around terroris
m, although one so-called expert was convinced it was caused by a suicidal pilot.
“You stupid fuck,” Terry said to the TV. “A pilot would commit suicide by plowing the plane into downtown Burbank, not by blowing it up in midair.”
“Let him talk,” Brian said. “Ike needs idiots like that obscuring the truth.”
Brian tried to work, but for the most part Terry and I kept distracting him. I picked up the double-sided picture frame on his desk. I pointed to the older couple. “Your Mom and Dad?”
He smiled. “Married when they were seventeen. Mom taught first grade. My Dad was a railroad cop for forty years. He’s a hell of a guy. They broke the mold after they made him.”
“They broke the mold with my Dad, too,” I said. “Actually we’re pretty sure it was cracked before they even started.”
Curry laughed. “What did he do?”
“He’s devoted his life to bugging the shit out of me. He’s still at it.”
“I hate to interrupt this fascinating repartee,” Terry said, “but the three of us are as useless here as tits on a bull. Let’s go out and get some lunch.”
Curry shook his head. “I don’t think we should leave.”
“Why?” Terry said. “Because the FBI needs us? As far as they’re concerned, we’re the dummies that couldn’t solve it. Explain it to him, Mike.”
“Terry gets cranky when he’s running on empty,” I said. “Come on, it won’t hurt to run out and grab a quick bite. We’ve got radios. They’ll find us.”
“Alright,” Curry said. “Let me just check my e-mail.”
“And I’ll check my pee mail,” Terry said. “Point me toward a urinal.”
Curry didn’t answer. He was preoccupied by whatever was on his computer screen. Terry and I were about to find a men’s room on our own when Curry stopped us. “Don’t go!” he yelled. “Get Ike and the Feds in here. I’ve got to shut down Ramona.”
“Who’s Ramona?” I said, my voice and my blood pressure kicking up a few notches.
“The Ramona Rabbit Parking Lot. I’m shutting it down. Those fucking maniacs just e-mailed me the ransom demands.”
Terry took off to get the others, and I scrambled to the other side of the desk and scanned the screen. Curry grabbed a radio from his desk and pressed the Talk button. “Security One to Ramona Parking, come in Ramona.”
The radio squawked back. “This is Ramona. Go ahead Security One.”
“Shut Ramona down,” Curry said. “Divert everything to Dexter. Now. You copy that?”
The voice on the other end was young and female. “Yes, sir. Shutting down Ramona now. Just a minute, sir.”
I could hear the young woman yelling at the other parking lot attendants. “Yo! Julie, Melissa, we’re shutting Ramona down. Divert those cars to Dexter. Yo! Jason, don’t let that Mazda sneak in. Thank you.”
“It’s a little nuts here, sir,” she said, over the sound of horns honking. “The guests are not thrilled that they have to divert, but we’re on the case.”
“How many cars in Ramona right now?” Brian asked.
“Rough estimate, maybe only three hundred, sir. We just opened this lot about ten minutes ago.”
Brian turned to me. “We’re in luck. Ramona holds six thousand cars, but we operate the parking sectors on a stagger system. We don’t open one until the lot in front of it is full.” He went back to his radio. “How many guests are waiting for the shuttle?”
“Fifty, sixty,” she said.
“Get them back in their cars and send them to Dexter. Then tell shuttle dispatch no more service in or out of Ramona until further notice from me. This is Brian Curry, Head of Security. Who am I talking to?”
“This is Caitlin Farley, sir.”
“You’re doing a good job, Caitlin. Over.”
Ten minutes later Ike Rose and the six Feebies piled through the doorway of Brian’s office. “They made contact,” Brian said to Ike. “E-mail.”
Rose sat on the edge of a chair. The rest of us stayed standing. “It’s from [email protected], sent today at 11:47 a.m.,” Curry said checking his watch. “Fifteen minutes ago. Subject: payoff time. Message: Curry, pass this on to Ike Rose and the Keystone Cops who are bumping into each other as they hover around him.”
Curry looked up to see if anyone wanted to comment, but nobody said a word. Not even Terry. Curry went on. “Send two men, unarmed and shirtless to the black Ford van in row fourteen, space nine, of the Ramona Parking Lot. Take the twenty-seven duffel bags from the back and fill them up. Put exactly ten million in hundreds in each bag, 6.4 million in the last bag. Put the bags back in the van by 5 p.m.”
“Are they crazy?” Rose said, springing up from the chair. “They want us to make the payoff in our own parking lot? That’s the dumbest fucking plan I ever heard of. That lot is filled with people going back and forth all day.”
“Not any more sir,” Brian said. “I just shut it down.”
“What if people want to get their cars back so they can drive home?”
“There are only three hundred vehicles parked there now,” Brian said. “If it were up to me, I’d get a bunch of tow trucks and flatbeds and move them all except the black van. But I’m not in charge here.” He looked over at Church.
“Good call locking up that parking lot,” Church said. “I agree that we should move every single vehicle, but I don’t give a shit about people getting their cars back. I just want to isolate the van.”
“Put the bags back in the van by 5 p.m.,” Brian said, returning to the e-mail. “A few minutes after that, we’ll be picking it up.”
“And then what?” Rose said. “They just drive it off the property? Would they like us to provide them with a police escort?”
Terry could no longer resist. “I doubt if they’re going to want us Keystone Cops fucking up their getaway, sir,” he said.
Sometimes Terry pushes too far, but this time even the FBI guys laughed.
“Let me finish,” Brian said, quieting the room down. “There are video cameras on, in, and around the van. We’re watching every move you make. Any tricks and the first ones to die are Rose’s family.”
Rose’s shoulders slumped. He was only five-foot-four, and now, surrounded by a room full of six-footers and beaten down by terrorists who invaded his home and threatened his family, he looked even shorter than usual.
“Get the bags,” he said. “I’ve got the money downstairs.”
CHAPTER 76
‘I’ve got the money downstairs’ was an understatement. Six stories below the fun and the fantasy was an impenetrable steel fortress where an army of bean counters processed the millions that poured into Familyland daily.
“We call this place Little Switzerland,” Brian said, as he took me and Terry on a tour of the facilities. “Every dollar, franc, and yen spent in the park is counted, re-counted, and accounted for. Every credit card receipt is authenticated, substantiated, and validated.”
We stopped in an area where four workers wearing rubber aprons were dumping bags of coins into sudsy water. “And this must be where the money gets laundered,” Terry said.
Brian shook his head like he’d heard that one before. “We have thirty-two fountains on the property. We encourage people to toss in a coin, make a wish, and help a child who can’t be here. The money we collect goes to Ike’s favorite charity, Vitamin Angels. Then he personally matches it. He’s a good guy.”
I nodded in agreement. He sure seemed like one.
We finally arrived at the room where the ludicrous sum of $266.4 million was being prepped for delivery.
Until the e-mail arrived, nobody knew for sure how the ransom would have to be paid out. But Church’s gut instinct told him that the killers would ask for cash. So Ike had a Wells Fargo armored truck with the $266.4 million standing by. Now, the Bureau’s mad scientists were in the Familyland subterranean bank deftly doctoring random packets to send out electronic tracking signals. Our job is to follow the money, Church had said repea
tedly.
Terry and I had the honors of being the unarmed shirtless bagmen who would carry the duffel bags from the rear of the van. We had volunteered as soon as Ike left Brian’s office.
“That money is pretty heavy,” Church said. “I got younger, stronger guys who can do it.”
“C’mon, Boss,” Terry said. “This may be the only chance Mike and I get to work topless.”
A slo-mo grin spread across Church’s face. He didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking. You waited for Ike Rose to leave the room before you volunteered. If you had asked while he was still there, you would have put me in an embarrassing position, because he’s your new rabbi and he would have pushed me to give you the job. But you didn’t do that. If you did, you’d be back at LAPD complaining about how the fucking Feds cut you out of the loop.
“Okay,” he finally said, loud enough for all his agents to hear. “Lomax and Biggs will be the bagmen.”
Once again Aretha was right. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Ramona was the smallest of seven parking lots on the Familyland property. According to Brian it only held six thousand cars. The north and east ends were open to allow the free flow of traffic. The southern and western perimeter was surrounded by trees, which were being carefully combed by a team of agents.
Row after row of uniform parking spaces were neatly painted and numbered. The lot was dotted with stainless steel columns that rose sixty or seventy feet in the air. Each pole ended in a cluster of floodlights. It was still broad daylight, but I got the impression that darkness never fell on Ramona.
Retrieving the duffel bags was easy. The Feds set up a command post, a thirty-foot Winnebago parked half a football field away from the van. Terry and I stripped to the waist, walked slowly to the rear of the shiny black Ford, and opened the rear door. The inside was completely empty except for the driver’s seat. I saw at least three tiny video cameras. One, perched on the dash, was pointing right at us. Two more fish-eye lenses covered the parking lot. They said they were watching every move we made and I believed them.
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