by Dick Lochte
‘Damn. Hard to turn down.’
One set of elevator doors opened and Mace was swept in along with a dozen others, including the two young conversationalists.
‘Turn down?’ the Dodgers cap said, as he pressed the ‘24’ button. ‘He goes up to a hundred and ten thou.’
Mace was too far away from the buttons to press his floor, so he called out, ‘Could someone please hit twenty seven?’
No one responded.
Maybe they were too intrigued by Dodger cap’s tale. ‘So I got him up to one hundred and twenty thou. And he’s telling me he respects my faith and he really wants to make this deal which has nothing to do with our religious beliefs. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And he throws out one hundred and twelve.’
‘No shit?’
‘We close at one hundred and fourteen.’
The door opened on the twenty-fourth floor. As the two men exited, Mace heard Dodgers cap say, ‘And, bottom line, I’m not even Jewish.’
The doors closed on his self-satisfied chuckle.
Mace had already been on edge. And he didn’t appreciate the self-involved passengers ignoring his request a second time. He pushed a man out of his way and reached over a plump woman just in time to stop the elevator on the twenty-seventh floor.
He squeezed out of the sardine can to a spotless off-white hall. To his right, the hall led to an exit stairwell. To his left, restrooms. Directly in front of him was a polished wooden door that read ‘Mount Olympus Industries’ in shiny brass letters. It was the only door on that side of the building, which meant that Mount Olympus occupied the complete floor. Definitely a step up from the company’s old offices, which had been in a bungalow in the Studio City Business Park.
The reception area was designed to resemble an exotic port of call. Softly lit. The walls were a pale, pastel violet. Air circulated, as cool as an ocean breeze. It carried a hint of perfume and possibly suntan lotion, though Mace wouldn’t swear to that. Stunted potted palm trees were placed at various key points in the room. The furnishings, comfortable looking chairs and sofas, were constructed of faded rattan and leather, with cushions covered in bright island prints.
There was a wall that curved inward on an entryway to what Mace assumed was the working office. Just to the right of the wall, a receptionist was seated behind a kidney-shaped rattan desk. She was a beautiful, very black woman with an orchid in her hair. She was wearing a pearl-gray suit over a blouse that picked up the color of the walls. Mace was a little let down that she hadn’t gotten into the spirit of things with a sarong. But she did compliment the decor. Which was more than he could say about the big, raw-boned dude with a crew cut giving him the stink-eye from a chair to his left.
The receptionist was observing Mace, too, but in a much friendlier manner.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said. ‘May I help you?’
She sounded a little like she might have been the woman who’d answered the phone. ‘I’d like to see Mr Lacotta.’
‘Ah. And you have an appointment, Mr . . . ?’
Mace walked past her through the entry to a room where half a dozen employees sat in cubicles, busy with tasks that he could not begin to imagine.
‘Sir!’ the receptionist called behind him.
He double-timed it past the cubicles and faced four closed doors. He figured Paulie would want windows and a nice big corner space.
‘Really, sir . . .’ The receptionist’s heels were clicking nearer on the floor tiles.
He headed for the corner door and had it open before she could stop him.
It was a Paulie-type office. Dark leather, smoked glass. Drapes covering the windows. A rich, thick carpet. An absolutely pristine desktop. Signed portraits of the Lakers and the Dodgers on one wall. A shelf with uniform, buckram-bound books. The only thing that surprised Mace was Paulie’s absence.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the receptionist said, anger removing a thin veneer of practiced cordiality.
‘This is Lacotta’s office, right?’ he asked.
‘It is.’
‘He’s not here,’ Mace said stupidly.
‘No he isn’t. Now leave these premises or I call security.’
Mace stepped back out of the office and without pause headed for the next door.
‘Damn you,’ the receptionist said, and rushed after him.
He opened the door to a conference room. Lacotta and three guys in suits sat at a long table. Two had notepads in front of them. All had coffee cups.
They turned to stare at him.
Paulie didn’t seem too disturbed. ‘Mace?’
‘It’s important,’ Mace said.
‘So’s this. Gimme a couple minutes.’ Paulie looked past him to the receptionist. ‘Teddi, get Mr Mason some juice or something.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said though clenched teeth. She reached past Mace to pull the door shut in his face.
‘What kind of juice would you like?’ she asked flatly as they returned to the reception area.
‘Any beer?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Then forget it.’
He moved to a chair. The raw-boned man gave him a lazy glance, then shifted his interest to the copy of Forbes open on his lap.
Eighteen minutes later, by Mace’s watch, the conference room door opened and the four men exited. Paulie led his guests to the elevator, where they shook hands. Mace judged the mood to be more strained than cordial.
The raw-boned man got to his feet and sauntered to the others. He paused beside a thickset man in a tailored blue pinstripe suit. A banker, maybe. Or a politician. The occupations seemed interchangeable. The raw-boned man whispered something in the other’s ear and they both stared openly at Mace.
He gave them a wink and a friendly wave.
They did not seem amused.
The elevator arrived and they and the other two men departed.
Paulie walked toward him, his face unreadable. Mace stood and followed him into his private office.
As soon as he’d closed the door, Paulie wheeled on him. ‘This is a goddamned place of business, not a barroom. You used to have some control, some class. What the fuck’s the matter with you?’
‘We have to talk.’
Lacotta checked his watch. It was big and gold-rimmed. ‘OK. Come. I wanna show you something.’
He headed for a door to the left of his desk, leading Mace to a small windowless room that seemed to be a mini-gym. Black pads on the carpet. A couple of campaign chairs, several pairs of bright red dumb-bells and an exercycle. The only unusual element was some kind of space age fixture in the center of the ceiling, a shiny black box with black metal tubes telescoping from it, aimed at three of the room’s four walls.
Paulie removed his coat and placed it on an empty chair.
Mace said, ‘It’s important. It’s about Wylie.’
‘Cool your jets,’ Lacotta said. ‘Check this out.’
He moved to the exercycle, straddled it and pressed a button on its dashboard. The room was thrown into darkness. Within seconds, lights streamed from the metal tubes and the three blank walls were turned into a 270-degree cyclorama of a beautiful rural bike path. Birds were singing. Clouds floated by.
Mace was not impressed. His patience had worn through. He stepped forward to drag Lacotta off the exercycle. And a remarkable thing happened. A fully dimensional but oddly transparent young woman in shorts and a halter appeared at the left of the room and walked to the right. She blew Mace a kiss.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ Mace said, momentarily stymied. There was something about the semi-transparent woman that reminded him of the giant dog he’d seen at Tiny’s.
‘It’s a prototype of a system called Simureal,’ Lacotta said. ‘Something, huh?’
A male jogger appeared from nowhere. His image pixilated a little before he disappeared. Holograms! Mace remembered the dying security officer. He’d thought the man’s last words had been ‘dog’ and ‘whole’. He’d
been trying to say that Tiny’s big white dog was a hologram.
Intriguing, but not why Mace had come to Lacotta’s office.
‘Paulie . . .’ he began.
‘Wait. Watch this,’ Lacotta said, his feet turning the pedals.
The scene changed. It was as if the room were zooming forward along the path, keeping pace with Lacotta’s pedaling. Dimensional images of fellow cyclists and joggers appeared and disappeared.
This may have been entertaining to someone sitting on a cycle, pedaling, but for Mace, standing still in the room, it was annoying and disorienting. ‘Listen to me, you son of a bitch.’ he shouted. ‘Stop this goddamn thing.’
‘Can’t stop the future,’ Paulie said. ‘You got any idea the kind of money people spend on exer—’
‘Wylie’s dead,’ Mace said.
It took a few seconds for the words to work their way past Paulie’s exuberance.
Then he stopped pedaling. He pressed the machine’s off button and the holographic image froze and disappeared. The ceiling lights went back on. He sat on the machine, frowning for a beat.
‘Dead,’ he said. ‘How?’
‘The group who picked me up near Tiny’s grabbed him in the garage at the Florian. The big guy, the one with the mentality of a kid, got him in a bear hug. When I found him he needed a doctor. But he didn’t want one, because he thought you wouldn’t like it.’
‘A good kid.’
‘Was,’ Mace said. ‘He got out of bed and ran out of the door to prove he didn’t need a doctor. He made it as far as the pool.’
‘Jesus! How . . . ? Why didn’t you . . . ?
‘Why didn’t I what, Paulie? What more could I have done? I left him dead in his own blood beside the Florian’s swimming pool and got the hell out of there. You might want to phone your buddy the manager with instructions. While you’re at it, make damn sure he forgets I was ever there.’
Paulie slipped off the exercycle, dazed.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Better phone.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Uniformed cops had been at the Florian for about half an hour Henry Sussman, Paulie’s buddy the building manager, informed him. They’d thrown a tarp over the dead man and taped off that section of the deck. They’d closed the pool. Like them, Sussman was waiting for the homicide detectives and the forensics people. He wanted to know what he should say to them.
‘Keep it simple,’ Paulie told him. He was seated at the desk in his office, using the speakerphone so that Mace, perched on a corner of the desk, could hear. ‘Tell ’em the truth, Henry. Wylie checked in a week ago on a week-to-week basis. He was quiet, kept to himself.’
Sussman seemed to need guidance. He mumbled something about shredding Wylie’s registration card.
‘No, don’t do that,’ Paulie replied. ‘Show it to the cops when they ask for it. Jesus, Henry, don’t fall apart on me. No problem with them knowing where the kid worked. They come here and I talk to ’em. No big deal.
‘Here’s the thing to remember. The kid was staying there by himself . . .’
‘Should I tell them he rented the apartment for business?’
‘No. No. No. You don’t know why he checked in or how long he was planning to stay. He was using his credit card to pay the bill, right? Good. That’s what the cops are gonna want and you give it to ’em.’
‘What about his car? What do I do with it?’
Mace shook his head in dismay.
‘It’s a rental, Henry,’ Paulie said, his face reddening. ‘The cops’ll probably impound it. If not, Avis will send somebody to retrieve it. It’s not your problem, OK?’
‘I guess.’
‘Good. OK,’ Paulie said. ‘Give Lois and the kids my love.’
‘Sure . . .’
Paulie clicked his phone shut and stood up.
‘Excuse me if I’m not placing a lot of confidence in Henry,’ Mace said.
‘I don’t even think he knows your name,’ Paulie said, pacing back and forth.
‘I sure as hell didn’t give it to him.’
‘You think I did?’ Paulie’s face was crimson now.
‘I think you’re spending too much time in your virtual world and not enough in the real one. What happens when the detectives working the Point Dume murders decide to check out your ex-girlfriend and tie that in with Wylie’s murder?’
‘You’re a goddamned doomster, Mace. You’re lovin’ this, aren’t you? My life gets any more fucked up, you’ll be in paradise.’
‘You going to cry?’
Paulie took a swing at him. Slow enough for Mace to slide off the desk, move under the punch and hit him once in the stomach.
With a painful grunt, Paulie folded and fell to the carpet. Wheezing, holding his stomach, he looked up at Mace through tears of pain and said, ‘Bastard . . . Call yourself a friend . . . Hate my guts, don’t you?’
Mace extended a hand to him. ‘Sure. That’s why I came back to LA. Why I’ve been dodging bullets and risking a return trip to Pel Bay.’
Paulie took the offered hand and got to his feet. ‘My head’s all screwed up,’ he said, his mood shifting into maudlin. ‘I know you’re my buddy, Mace. My only trustworthy amigo.’
‘Tell me what you’re into.’
Paulie merely sighed and shook his head.
‘Weapons deal?’ Mace prompted.
Paulie narrowed his eyes. ‘Where’d that come from?’
‘Wiley told me about Commingore Industries,’ Mace said. And your trip to DC.’
Paulie sighed again. ‘I might as well level with you. Sit, for Christ’s sake. You make me nervous.’
Mace took a chair and watched Paulie move to a cabinet that contained a small compact refrigerator. ‘Water?’ he asked. When Mace shook his head, he removed a bottle of Perrier for himself, popped the cap and took a long swig.
He carried what was left of the water back to his desk chair and sat. ‘It was a gold mine,’ he said.
Mace stared at him, waiting for more.
Paulie reached under his desk and, behind him, the row of what had appeared to be Morocco-bound books turned out to be leather book spines attached to a wooden panel that swung out on hinges. Exposing a wall safe.
Mace watched, bemused, as Paulie hopped to his feet, punched a few numbers on the safe’s lock and pressed his thumb against a small glowing green square that appeared. The door to the safe clicked open. Paulie reached in and removed what looked like a Colt Double Eagle pistol.
Mace tensed.
Paulie tossed the weapon to him. He’d expected it to be much heavier and he almost fumbled it. He hefted it, puzzled. He pressed a catch behind the trigger and released the magazine. He tapped the magazine against the gun butt. ‘It’s not real,’ he said. ‘It’s a prop.’
‘You musta seen The Graduate, huh,’ Paulie said. ‘Dustin Hoffman is this kid who doesn’t know what the fuck to do with his life after college. And this asshole tells him he’s got one word that’s gonna make Dustin’s future. The word is: “Plastics”.’
‘OK,’ Mace said. ‘So this is plastic and it looks real enough, but it’s still a prop.’
‘It’s real, Mace. It kills just like a gun made of metal. The plastic is so fucking hard you can make a missile out of it. A warhead. An airplane, if you want. It’s as strong as steel.’
Mace cocked a skeptical eyebrow. He worked one of the bullets from the magazine. ‘This isn’t fake,’ he said.
‘Neither is the gun. I ran out of the plastic bullets doing the tests.’
‘Plastic gun, plastic bullets,’ Mace said.
‘There’s never a depression where weapons are concerned, and right now there’s maybe four companies in the US draggin’ down nearly forty billion a year selling arms overseas. Wasn’t long ago, everybody was going nuts over the new Howitzer because the manufacturer was able to bring the weight down to nine thousand eight hundred pounds. That’s because it was made of high-tensile titanium. This plastic could cut that weight by two-thi
rds, Mace. It’ll make titanium all but fucking obsolete. Not only that, it’s cheap to manufacture. And the beauty part is that it can’t be detected by any existing defense gear.
‘Before I could board a plane two weeks ago, they made me take my shoes off. And my car keys set off a buzz, but they still don’t know I walked through their metal detector with that weapon, armed and ready, in an ankle holster.’
Mace placed the gun on Lacotta’s desk.
‘And it’s all legit. This is gonna help us kick Al-Qaeda’s butt. Or anybody else’s.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
Paulie gave him a wry smile. ‘You know me, Mace. If there’s a way to miss a slam dunk, I’ll find it.’
Mace wasn’t sure he wanted to hear Paulie’s tale of woe. Billion-dollar deals. Plastic guns. It meant about as much to him as a Hollywood starlet’s cocaine habit. But there was one point of interest. ‘Where does Angela Lowell fit in?’ he asked.
Paulie blinked as if the question caught him off-guard. ‘Angie?’ he said. ‘That’s a long story.’
‘Highlight it for me,’ Mace said.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Angie’s story is another example of me reverting to form,’ Paulie said. ‘One of the guys who was just here – the one in the tailor-made suit . . . ’
Mace frowned.
‘Blue pinstripe. Gabardine. Nipped in the waist. High armholes.’
‘Yeah,’ Mace said. ‘The first thing I notice about a guy is the way his clothes fit.’
‘Sorry,’ Paulie said. ‘So I started out in the shmata business . . .’
‘Stealing shmata,’ Mace said. ‘But I know the guy you mean. Gray hair. Stone face. Had a bodyguard waiting in reception.’
‘His name’s Corrigan. Ex-CIA. He set up the auction for the formula a while back. Mount Olympus was the high bidder. We wired the loot to his offshore account. The transfer of the formula was a little trickier. Corrigan brokers his deals from an art gallery in Paris. It’s a front, but he knows one painting from another. Does a lot of legit business in Europe and here in the States. So I get this idea.’
‘Angela Lowell is an art appraiser,’ Mace said.