I took another look at Mrs. P. She didn’t look like she was on the winning team. “And the brokerage fee that my brother pays,” I said, “that would be the extent of our family’s obligation to you for your services?”
“Well I would hope that you would remember me fondly if I ever get a summons for jaywalking,” he said, patting my shoulder like we were old friends.
Jaywalking. This coming from a man who has been quoted as saying the only way for two men to keep a secret is if one of them is dead. He turned to Vicki. “Say goodbye to Mr. Lomax. You won’t be seeing him again.”
She barely moved. “Goodbye,” she said.
“I apologize for my brother,” I said. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you. He has an addiction. He gambles.”
“I have an addiction myself,” she said. “I keep getting involved with assholes.”
Cappadonna shook my hand. “You’re a lot classier than your brother,” he said, as he walked me to the door. The two thuglings escorted me to my car and watched me drive out of sight.
CHAPTER 93
I drove home, made coffee, showered, shaved, and thumbed through the L.A. Times. According to unconfirmed reports, four thousand Lamaar employees had resigned. It seemed like a small number considering the magnitude of the threat. But the paper pointed out that most low-level workers wouldn’t bother resigning. They would just stop showing up. And there were thousands of mid-level employees who wanted to quit, but they couldn’t find any bosses to quit to.
At 6:00 I called Big Jim. “Good news,” I said. “They agreed to call the dogs off Frankie. It’ll cost money, but he’ll live to fuck up another day.”
“Thank God,” he said. Not, How much. Thank God. That’s Big Jim.
“The price tag is a hundred and fifteen thousand,” I said.
“Ouch,” he said. “There goes my plan for retiring before I die.”
“It’s expensive raising kids. And we need it in cash by noon tomorrow.”
“No problem,” he said. “I got it right here in the safe.”
“Of course you do. Who doesn’t have a hundred and fifteen thou just lying around the house?”
“It was Angel’s idea. She said sooner or later we’re going to need it, so I cashed my CDs. When they say ‘substantial penalty for premature withdrawal’ they ain’t kidding. The guy at the bank told me I was making a mistake, and I told him I made the mistake when I decided to get your mother pregnant for the second time. What kind of crooks are you dealing with that won’t take a check?”
“Technically, they’re not doing anything crooked,” I said. “They just happen to have the juice to help us out. The only crook here is Frankie.”
“I’m sorry you had to get your hands dirty,” he said. “I’m amazed you found time. I’ve been watching the news. I figured you’d be up to your nuts with the Lamaar fiasco.”
“I got three hundred FBI agents and the Secretary of Homeland Security helping me on Lamaar. I decided they wouldn’t miss me for a few hours if I worked the Frankie Lomax fiasco.”
“Thanks,” he said. “How do we make the payoff?”
“There is no we. You deliver the money to me tomorrow morning at 10:00. I’ll deliver it to them.”
“Why can’t I go with you?”
“Because you’ll annoy the shit out of them, and they’ll want more money. Dad, this is my operation. We are doing it my way.”
“You’re so fucking stubborn. You take after your mother,” he said. “Alright, fine, I’ll bring you the money. Diana’s apartment at ten.”
“What makes you think I’ll be at Diana’s apartment?”
“Because, Detective Numbnuts, you don’t just take after your mother.”
CHAPTER 94
I hate working weekends. Especially when I’m one of two hundred cops looking for a terrorist in a haystack. It reminds me of voting. You know your vote doesn’t count, but you go through the motions, because it’s been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference.
I got to the FBI offices at 8:45. I’d been awake five hours and felt like I’d already put in an exhausting day. My partner, on the other hand, was raring to go. “The tip lines are lit up like Figueroa Street on Cinco de Mayo,” he said.
Tips on major crimes come in from psychics and psychotics, publicity hounds, and cat ladies who want nothing more than a detective to come over to the house and chat over a cup of tea. It’s frustrating, time-consuming, and usually unrewarding work. But occasionally, someone with a legitimate lead gets through, which is why we’re willing to open the floodgates.
“We got a break,” Terry said. “A woman in Dallas saw the guy who bombed the Burger King yesterday. This just came in from the Bureau Chief down there. Garet said we should stroll by his office when we finish looking it over. I read it. You may want to move faster than a stroll.“
He handed me a thin stack of paper that had been stapled together. I grabbed it and started reading like a kid at summer camp who finally gets his first letter from home.
Bonnie Dolan, a thirty-five-year-old freelance fabric designer, called the local FBI office two hours after the explosion. She had been tentative at first and asked the agent if an old man at Burger King had had a seizure and busted his head open before the bomb went off.
After some prodding, the agent determined that Mrs. Dolan and her two daughters had gone to Burger King just minutes before the blast, but a man in the parking lot had convinced them to leave so they wouldn’t have to see the seizure victim. When the news broke, Dolan began to wonder if the man kept her out of the restaurant to keep her kids from getting hurt in the explosion.
“He had a thick Irish brogue,” Mrs. Dolan had said, “and Lord knows those people know a thing or two about bombs. He said his name was Liam Flaherty and he lived in Brooklyn, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was as big a lie as the old man supposedly bleeding on the floor.”
That day’s surveillance tapes had been destroyed in the blast, but there was an Arby’s across the road that picked up Mrs. Dolan’s minivan as it pulled out of the Burger King. It also picked up a late model Taurus that pulled out directly behind her, but the plates were unreadable.
Working under the theory that the bomber scouted the place in advance, the agent got Burger King’s surveillance tapes from the past seven days. The same Taurus had been there three different times before Friday, but the driver wore sunglasses and a baseball cap that hid most of his face. The car was identified as having been rented from Hertz six days prior at DFW Airport.
Hertz had recorded the entire transaction, with sound, on high-quality tape. This time the man was in plain view. Mrs. Dolan positively identified him as “the gentleman who kept her family from getting blown up.”
He had used a New York driver’s license, but both the name and number turned out to be bogus. Based on the time stamp on the rental contract, the agents—there were now twelve of them working the lead—pinpointed an American Airlines flight as the one that had brought him to DFW.
His passport said Declan Brady. Interpol verified that the man on the Hertz video was indeed Declan Brady, a mercenary from Belfast who was suspected of five professional hits, but never arrested. In the grand scheme of things Brady was considered a low-level nuisance because his victims were usually other lowlifes whom Interpol was happy to see eliminated.
The report noted that while Mrs. Dolan had made a positive ID, she had mixed emotions about being Brady’s accuser. “He must have some good in his heart,” she told the agent. “Look at what he did for me and my girls.”
The Taurus had been returned to a Hertz office in downtown Dallas thirty minutes after the bomb blast. The car had been cleaned and re-rented long before the agents had even gotten the first phone call from Mrs. Dolan.
Airport security tapes were scanned, but there was no indication that Brady had left Dallas on a flight out of DFW.
His picture was distributed to every cop in Dallas, all re
nt-a-car offices in the area, and all checkpoints along the Texas-Mexican border.
The heat was on.
We didn’t stroll to Church’s office. We flew.
CHAPTER 95
Church was sitting at his desk. The sling was gone.
“How’s the shoulder?” I said.
“Hurts like hell, but I hate walking around looking like a casualty.”
“Did you want to talk about this field report from Dallas?” I said.
“First things first,” Church said. “I just spoke to Ike. I wanted to let you know before the press picks it up. He’s gone underground. Snuck out of town in the middle of the night.”
I was surprised, and a little disappointed. “That’s too bad,” I said. “I thought he was the kind of leader who would tough it out with his people.”
“He is,” Church said. “They’re just not going to tough it out in L.A. He went to higher ground, and he took fifteen hundred of his people with him.”
Terry let out a low whistle. “That’s almost as big a posse as the one that travels with Britney Spears.”
“Ike’s biggest concern has been the well-being of the people who are sticking with the company. He feels like they’re on the front line, so he moved them out of harm’s way. And they took all their family members with them. It was a mass exodus, and they pulled it off without a hitch.”
“Do you know where they are?” I asked.
“Yes. And some of my men are with them. I’d rather not tell you guys until you have a need to know.”
“I don’t want to know,” Terry said.
“I don’t want him to know either,” I said. “He tells his wife everything.”
“Now let’s talk about the field report from Dallas,” Church said. “What did you guys think?”
“It’s great,” I said. “If Dallas can nail this Brady guy, he’ll give up the people who paid him. This could be the break we’ve been looking for.”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “This is the best news we’ve had since we found out that the dead guy in the Rambo suit was actually a dead pedophile.”
“It’s good to see you so upbeat,” Church said. “Most guys who work a hundred-hour week get cranky by Saturday.”
“Speaking of working around the clock, I need some personal time tomorrow morning.” I’ll be forking over my father’s life savings at the 12-Plex to save my kid brother’s ungrateful ass. “How about if I come in around 2:00?”
“How about if you and Terry both take tomorrow off. You’ve been working double shifts for two weeks straight. Get your batteries recharged.”
I was seeing Diana tonight. The thought of extending it into the weekend, with just one small interruption to pay for Frankie’s sins, was tempting.
I knew where Terry’s head was. He’d be thrilled to have a day with his wife and kids. He looked at me and shrugged. “Your call, Mike.”
“It sounds good, but don’t you think Kilcullen would be happier if we came in?”
“Tell Lieutenant Kilcullen that I pulled rank on him,” Church said. “Shut up and take the fucking day off.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We accept.”
Terry dragged me out of the office before I could change my mind.
CHAPTER 96
It was 2:15, and I was regretting the Jalapeno roll-ups I had for lunch, when Muller called. He’s the Master of Understatement, so when he said, ‘I think maybe I got something,’ I knew he didn’t mean maybe, and it would be a lot more than something.
“I’ve been working with the Federalés,” Muller said. “Nice folks. This one guy went to MIT and he contributes open source code for Mozilla…”
“Muller, I’m glad you made friends,” I said. “But can we jump to the part where you got something. What is it you got?”
“Credit card records. Your three boys went on a spending spree. Sicily, Israel, Ireland, and a few other places where one might shop for saboteurs and other freelance hooligans.”
“And it was right there on their credit cards for anyone to see?”
“Not anyone. The Feds didn’t catch it. Even the Alpha Geek was impressed when I figured it out.”
“How fast can you get over here and brief us?”
“I thought you might say that. I’m in the lobby.”
Five minutes later Terry and I, Church and Collins, and half a dozen other agents were seated at a conference table, pens poised, waiting for the details.
Muller stood at the front of the room. He looked like a high school kid who still hadn’t started shaving yet, and a few of Church’s guys smirked. But as soon as he started talking, the grins disappeared.
“We started out looking for unusual credit card activity,” Muller said. “Big bumps that would indicate they took a trip to hire these killers. Nothing. Then it dawned on me. Maybe we should be looking for unusual inactivity.”
Terry winked at me. LAPD Pride.
Muller went on. “These guys use their credit cards a lot. Expensive restaurants, travel, clothes, jewelry—Kennedy shops regularly in one jewelry store on Rodeo Drive—and Barber can easily spend twenty, thirty grand a month on rare books. Two years ago, for twenty-four days straight—middle of August till early September—none of those guys used a single credit card.”
Church raised his hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “So they all had a zero balance bill?”
“It wasn’t that obvious, sir,” Muller said. “They all have automatic credit card charges, like club dues, that show up on their bill every month. Also the twenty-four days were spread across two billing cycles, so their August and September bills had charges. But the totals for those two months were a lot less than usual. I’d let that slide with one guy, but not all three of them. So I analyzed their day-to-day spending. Turns out none of them used a single credit card for twenty-four days.”
“What does that prove?” Church said.
“Nothing yet. So I went to the credit card companies and asked them to look for three different cards, all Southern California based, that ran up a hefty bill during those twenty-four days, but charged nothing before and nothing since.”
“I’m liking this,” Church said.
“The Small Business Division of American Express opened a new account for a company called Drum Roll Productions. It’s not uncommon in the movie business for a production manager to set up a separate charge account for each project. That way he can track which expenses get charged to which film. It’s also not uncommon for a producer to run up huge bills during a short period of time, wrap the production, and never use that card again.
“Three cards were issued to officers of the new company, Curvin O’connor, Maxwell Harper, and Kurt Schmidt. The billing address for all three is the same: a Mail Express in Ojai, California.”
“Kid,” Church said, “you have a future in police work. What got charged on the cards?”
“Airfare, hotels, restaurants, car rentals, just your basic travel expenses.”
“Are you sure they didn’t do anything a little more incriminating?” Terry said. “Like walk into Murder For Hire and order half a dozen assassins to go. Because then we could wrap this up in no time.”
“It’s not what they charged,” Muller said. “It’s where they charged it. Haifa, Belfast, Athens, Palermo—place for place their itinerary matches up with what we know about the actual killers.”
“Why do you think they left a paper trail?” Church said. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to pay cash?”
Muller’s eyes twinkled. Like he was waiting for that question. “I don’t know, sir,” he said. “If you were interviewing people who commit cold-blooded murder for money, how much cash would you carry?”
Everyone laughed, including Church. “Excellent, Mr. Muller. Since you’re way ahead of me, have you thought about how we can prove that the men who made those charges are actually Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht?”
“Yes sir. Once they had the credit cards, they kept building their new ident
ities. Eventually they took their phony credentials to the passport office, and a week later they’ve got genuine U.S. passports, all with fake names. The only problem is, they can’t fake their faces. The pictures have to look like them.
“So now all we have to do is call the State Department, give them the bogus names and ask for copies of their passport photos. If O’connor, Harper, and Schmidt look like Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht, you won’t have any trouble getting a federal prosecutor to sign a warrant.”
“Day off or no day off,” I said, “if we’re making an arrest, Terry and I want to be there.”
“Relax,” Church said. “I won’t let you guys miss out on any of the fun. First we have to contact State.”
“I already did, sir,” Muller said. “I figured we should get the process moving. You know how slow the federal government can be.”
Church cracked a smile. “Yeah, thanks, kid. I heard.”
CHAPTER 97
I have a fifties CD and I played Paul Anka singing Diana six times on my way home from the office. I took a twenty-minute power nap, showered, touched up my morning shave, and spent more than the usual thirty seconds brushing my hair.
I tried not to overthink my wardrobe, but I went through three different combinations before I settled on a my most comfortable pair of gray slacks from Nordstrom, my Ralph Lauren blue-and-white tattersall shirt, and my predictable navy blazer. I was only running ten minutes late when I left the house.
I stopped at the Sav-on drugstore on Rodeo Drive and bought a dozen condoms for me and a gift for Diana. I got to her apartment building on Wilshire and the doorman announced me. I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor and she was standing in the doorway of her apartment waiting for me.
I had only seen her in pinks and pastels, and tonight she was wearing black. She looked stunning. The dress was open at the neckline and tied at the waist. “You should wear black more often,” I said. “You look incredible.”
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