It was a smooth answer. Amy Cheever would have been proud.
Follow-up question. Judy Kaiser, a visitor to Familyland, was killed on Sunday, April 24 inside the park. Surely by then you knew that your employees and the general public were at risk. Why didn’t you issue a warning then? Why did you wait for nine more of your employees to be killed, and even then it was the people behind the killings who went public with the information.
“Lamaar has over sixty thousand employees worldwide. Hundreds of millions of people watch our movies, buy our products, and use our services. I made a decision that to go public would create panic. I hoped that the FBI could catch the murderers before any more damage was done. That didn’t happen.”
Ron Frank, Wall Street Journal. Were you afraid that going public with the information would hurt your stock?
“No. Our stock value didn’t play a factor in the decision that was made.”
Terry leaned over and whispered in my ear. “And I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” We both knew Rose was full of shit. My guess is that the guy who asked the question knew it too.
Follow-up question. When The New York Stock Exchange opened this morning, they immediately halted trading on Lamaar stock for two hours. When trading resumed your stock opened at $95, down from yesterday’s closing of $127.50. It’s now at $72 and declining. Will you try to convince the Exchange to halt trading indefinitely while your company is under siege?
“I wish I could, Ron, but as you well know, that’s not the way the market works. Whenever there is a significant imbalance between buyers and sellers on a stock, trading is halted long enough to allow the exchange specialists to set a new price range. They did, and our stock went into play again. It’s frustrating because the price is being driven down, not because of poor performance on our part, but as a direct result of crimes against the company.”
“Sir!” It was Brian Curry. He stepped up to the podium, whispered in Rose’s ear, and handed him a single sheet of paper. The room went silent as Rose read it carefully. The only sounds were the clacking of keyboards, the snapping of shutters, and the whirring of camera motors.
Rose finally stepped back up to the microphones. “I have some bad news,” he said. I could hear the tremor in his voice and see pain on his face. “A bomb was set off at a Burger King in Dallas, Texas. Four people are dead and about ten customers and employees have been injured.”
A chorus of voices wanted to know what this had to do with Lamaar.
“I was getting to that. We are in the middle of a fifty-million-dollar promotion with Burger King. The top one hundred winners were to be flown to Familyland and ride on floats down Fantasy Boulevard with the Lamaar characters during our big Fourth of July parade.”
There was a raucous flurry of questions. “Please, let me finish!” They quieted down. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the dead, the injured, and their families. I will call the senior management at Burger King immediately and cancel the promotion, and I will ask my people to contact every company we partner with to shut down all Lamaar merchandising and tie-ins.”
He paused and the reporters began firing away again. “Please,” he said, “I have a message for the American people. I don’t know why these crimes have been directed toward Lamaar, but I do know that innocent people should not have to suffer by association. In light of this tragedy, I am asking every man, woman, and child in America to disassociate from our company, our products, and our services. I apologize if you have been put at risk. I thank you for your understanding and ask only for your prayers. No more questions.”
Rose stepped down. Shutters clicked like a swarm of locusts. There was only one easy exit, a side door. Church, his arm in a sling, got behind Rose and shoved him toward it. Curry, Terry, and I were right behind them.
We went through two sets of double doors before the sound of reporters calling Ike Rose’s name finally faded. We were standing inside the Grand Ballroom’s huge industrial kitchen. It was empty. No chefs, no waiters, no food. Just stainless steel as far as the eye could see.
Brian Curry pounded the heel of his hand on the counter. “Shit! We had started to pull the plug on all promotions, but we have hundreds of them going on. We need more time.”
“They don’t want us to have time. They want us dead,” Rose said. He nodded to me and Terry. “I thought you’d be out talking to Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht.”
“We did,” I said. “They’re still high on our short list.”
“Why don’t you just arrest them?” Rose said.
“They aren’t doing the killing. There’s a network of paid assassins in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and God knows where else. Locking up the old men won’t necessarily stop the wheels that are in motion.”
“I agree,” Church said. “We’ll keep them under surveillance until we have something we can arrest them for. Right now we don’t have any grounds.”
“No grounds,” Rose said. “So four people died this morning. And more will die tomorrow. And more the day after that. What about those people?”
“Nothing is more frustrating to a cop than to watch innocent people die because we can’t get our job done fast enough,” Church said. “It sucks. But it happens. The military has come up with a real ugly term for it.”
“I was in the Army,” Rose said. “I know the term.”
We all knew it. Collateral damage.
CHAPTER 88
Rose thought it would be a good idea for Terry and me to meet with Curry’s team to get an up-close look at what they were doing and to fill them in on our morning visit to Ojai. Church agreed.
The three of us decided to take one car so we could talk on the way to Burbank. “Why didn’t your team just take some space in the hotel?” Terry said.
“The team is more like a battalion. More than three hundred people.” Curry laughed. “We can’t afford the room rates at The Beverly Wilshire. I was only in the hotel this afternoon because Ike wanted me at the press conference. I got the call about the bombing just after he started. It took me a few minutes to decide whether or not to break the news to him while he was up there, but I’m glad I did. His response was perfect. He got the message out for people to disassociate from Lamaar. That’s going to make our work easier.”
“What exactly is our work?” I asked.
“They said they’d kill anyone connected to us. Our job is to disconnect Lamaar from the world, then be ready to bounce back as soon as this is over.”
“How do you do that?” Terry asked.
“I have no idea. I have a lot of people helping, but none of them have any experience making a multi-billion-dollar corporation disappear into thin air. We’re making it all up as we go along.”
“What have you made up so far?” I said.
“We’ve divided people into three groups. The first is the Input Team. It’s made up of department heads, production people, traffic managers, database management, and a few old pros who know the company inside out. Their job is to help us find all our fingerprints.”
“What does that mean?” Terry said.
“It sounds ludicrous, but this company is so spread out, there’s no one person who could ever know all the things we’re into. Sure, we make movies and TV and have a theme park, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re also in sports marketing, travel, education, food service, theatrical production, cable, Web development, and a dozen other businesses. Each business has permeated the public culture in its own way. Our Merchandising Division alone has over twenty thousand active licensing agreements. The Input Team is compiling lists of all things Lamaar.
“That data gets fed to the Implementation Team. They’re handling the logistics of shutting everything down. TV and movie productions have to wrap, hotels have to close, cruise ships have to dock, and arrangements have to be made to fly the passengers home. Then there’s the nightmare of dealing with retailers who have to remove billions of Lamaar logo items from their shelves.”
> “Why do you even have to call them?”
“After what happened at Macy’s, every major retailer is working overtime to strip the shelves bare. That’s the good news. The bad news is they’re all calling us. Wal-Mart wants to know who’s going to pay for all the manpower that takes. Target asks who’s going to cart all that contaminated shit away. Let’s say the answer is us. How do we do that? And if we do, then what the fuck do we do with it? And to top it all off, our lawyers have told us that if we help a billion-dollar customer like Wal-Mart, we also have to help Patti’s Pet Emporium in Poughkeepsie get rid of their Slaphappy Puppy dog collars.”
“It sounds like we can get it all done by 5:00,” Terry said. “Which is good, because I promised my daughter I’d show up at her volleyball game.”
“We did computer projections,” Curry said. “It will take a minimum of ten days to dismantle a company this global and hide ninety percent of it from view. That means they’re going to keep attacking us. So we have a third team. The Think Tank. They come up with ‘what-if’ scenarios to show us where we could be the most vulnerable. That’s who you’ll be working with.”
We got to Burbank by 2:00. The office space was a forty-eight-thousand-square-foot sound stage. Hundreds of desks and conference tables had been arranged in small clusters and surrounded by temporary partitions that served both as dividers and makeshift bulletin boards. Most of the workers were dressed in jeans, shorts, or sweats, although a few men wore shirts and ties. Everyone wore a headset. People were talking on the phone, typing on laptops, and tacking color-coded cards onto the temporary walls.
It was chaotic, yet it felt organized. “I’m impressed,” I said. “You put this together in less than twenty-four hours?”
“We started setting up Sunday night right after the ransom demands. Ike wanted a command center. It was a contingency. We didn’t know if or why we would need it. Last night we opened for business. Everything is wireless, so it’s not nearly as difficult as having to hook up hundreds of phones and computers. There’s also a smaller stage next door. That’s where the Think Tank is.”
The second stage was divided in three. A dining facility, a dormitory area, plus a walled-off square about a hundred feet on a side that had a lot of the comforts of home. Overstuffed furniture, private workspaces, and large communal areas.
A large man with orange-gold hair saw us enter and came over to say hello. “Detectives Lomax and Biggs! It’s good to see you boys again.”
It was Ben Don Marvin. “I told you I wasn’t behind this,” he said. “I guess you believed me, because I got a call to fly in and help out.”
“Excuse me,” Terry said to Curry. “Would you mind explaining how someone gets promoted from the suspect list to the A-Team?”
Sorry,” Curry said. “I should’ve told you. He’s here because he’s done this before. Right after 9/11 he and a bunch of writers worked out hundreds of scenarios on how terrorists could hurt us.”
“He told us. That’s how he got the idea for the eBay scam.”
“That’s the other reason I was invited,” Marvin said. “I think like a criminal.”
There were twenty people in the Think Tank. Ben Don was the only felon. “Remember what Ike told you the first night you met him?” Curry said. “That he had resources no police department ever dreamed of. A Rolodex with presidents, prime ministers, and princes he could call on for help. He wasn’t kidding. Let me introduce you to the rest of the group.”
There were no princes, but we had four psychologists, two counter-terrorism experts, an Oscar-winning screenwriter, two best-selling mystery authors, a retired member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several people who just gave their names without saying what they did, and one guy who introduced himself as Bond… James Bond. Curry told us that he was a former member of the Israeli Mossad and that he was the most expensive person in the group.
“They’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts?” I said.
“They’re consultants,” he said. “They dropped what they were doing as a favor to Ike, but they still get paid.”
“Cuanto?” Terry said.
“On average, ten grand a day. Some a little less, some a little more. One a lot more. But ultimately it won’t cost us a penny. Ike is taping it. After this is over, he’s going to edit it and market it to big corporations that have similar security fears.”
Terry poked me in the shoulder. “And you said Ike was dumb.”
There was a twenty-foot-long black wall labeled HPHVT. Hundreds of neatly lettered white cards were velcroed to it. Each card was also marked with a red star, a green triangle, a yellow circle, or some other color-coded symbol. “Those are the High-Profile, Highly Vulnerable Targets,” Curry explained. “There are millions of potential targets. We can’t protect them all. So we’re just trying to come up with our version of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then we have to figure out how to prevent those targets from being attacked.
“The colors indicate levels of vulnerability and potential damage. This sound stage, for instance. The people in here are violating the directive. We’re working for, associating with, and supporting Lamaar. But it’s unlikely that they’ll ever know we’re here. We’ve also got armed men around the perimeter and air support, so we’re basically safe. Yellow circle.”
He pointed to the only card on the wall that had three red stars. It said families. “See this one? Hundreds of our top people have agreed to stick with us. We can protect them, but what about their wives and kids? You saw how they went after Ike’s daughter. Right now protecting the families of people who are willing to stay is our highest priority, but I guarantee you we’ll resolve it fast.”
“How about the one that says Camelot Hotel, Las Vegas,” Terry said. “It doesn’t have any Lucky Charms on it.”
“We contacted them. They know they’re a target, but they said they’ll handle their own security. Not our problem.”
We sat down with the group and filled them in on what we knew about the Cartoon Corps. Then we stayed for eight hours of brainstorming and head banging. It was totally exhilarating. They didn’t think like cops. They had something most cops either don’t have or don’t use. Imagination.
I’ve always believed that if the federal government didn’t have its head up its ass, they could have prevented 9/11 by doing exactly what Ben Don Marvin had done and what we were doing now. Put a bunch of creative people in a room, and instead of saying here’s how we’ve always dealt with the enemy in the past, ask them to think outside the box.
We were back in Terry’s car by 11 p.m. and he was driving me home. “This is the most fascinating day I’ve ever spent as a cop,” I said. “I’ve never seen so many smart people in one room.”
“I guess you’ve never been invited to a Biggs family reunion.”
“You may think you’re smart, Detective Biggs, but you and I were the dumbest fucks in the room.”
“Bullshit. I thought we held our own. What’s the difference between us and them?”
“Ten thousand dollars a day.” For once, he let me have the last laugh.
CHAPTER 89
Another sixteen-hour day. I was glad to be home. I reached into my pocket for my key and stopped dead. There was something hanging on my front doorknob. I backed off.
I was connected to Lamaar. Two of the three old men had my business card. All of them knew my name. I was a target. There was a bomb hanging on my front door.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? Mass murderers don’t come to cops’ houses and hang bombs on their doorknobs.” It was the little voice inside my head. It had a point.
My car was right there in the driveway. I went to the trunk, got a flashlight, and shone the beam on the front door from ten feet away. There was a bubble-pack envelope, about the size that you’d use to mail a videotape, taped to the knob. Mike Lomax was neatly printed on the front in black marker.
“If that’s a bomb, it’s a pretty small one. The worst i
t could do is blow off a few fingers. Use your left hand.” I thanked the voice for his help and told him I could take over from here.
I removed the envelope from the knob with my left hand, unlocked the door with my right and went inside. Andre wasn’t there. I called his name. He didn’t come. He was still with Kemp. I didn’t need the little voice to tell me I was jumpy. I was jumpy. I went from room to room checking the house. Nothing out of place. I felt like an idiot.
I put the envelope on the table, got a knife from the drawer, and sliced open the top. There was a box of candy inside. A large box. The kind you buy at the movies when you’re willing to pay four bucks for twenty cents worth of sugar. It was one of my favorites candies from when I was a kid. Red, yellow, orange, and green jelly beans. Mike and Ike.
I opened the box. No candy. No problem, I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. I dumped the box onto the table. A cell phone fell out.
I reached inside the box and pulled out a handwritten note.
I can help. Dial 77#. Then hit Send.
I have a bunch of informants. Some of them have strange ways of contacting me, but none of them would ever leave his number programmed into a cell phone, put it in a Mike and Ike box, and hang it on my front door. That’s pure show business.
I’d bet a week’s pay that if I dialed that number, the great Hollywood screenwriter himself, Mitch Barber, would be on the other end.
CHAPTER 90
It had not been a good day for Klaus Lebrecht. It started with an encrypted e-mail from Sophocles in New York. He was supposed to set off a bomb in a toy store that hadn’t yet removed the Lamaar displays. But the bastard backed out. “Too many kids. I can’t do kids.”
Lebrecht offered him more money, but the answer was still no. Sophocles agreed to wait for further instructions. “But no kids,” he said. “If you want to kill kids you should have hired a Turk.”
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