“Goss, what are you talking about? I haven’t seen any guns other than the antique Flintlock and the handgun in your desk.”
“The ones in the panic room!”
“But it’s locked. I haven’t been in the panic room before.”
“Oh, for—! Goddamnit! I’ll give you the code! It’s 467452!”
“Okay, got it.”
“Go to the panic room now,” Gossamer said. “It’s at the end of the hall, the door next to the bedroom. Keypad’s behind the framed picture of me with the Dalai Lama.”
We followed Keith down the hall as he kept the phone on speaker. The picture of Ross with the Dalai Lama was on a hinge, and Keith entered the code into the keypad behind it. I noticed there was a small camera installed at the top of the wall, housed inside a protective glass dome, the type Benjamin liked to use to keep tabs on people.
We heard heavy locks grind and the door on the wall opened.
Virtually every mansion in Los Angeles has a panic room. Gossamer Rand Ross’s was state-of-the-art. The air-conditioning system automatically kicked in and a gentle breeze blew the stuffiness away. The room was spacious enough to accommodate a bed, a desk, an armchair, a sofa, and a coffee table.
There were shelves of tinned foods, the most upmarket kind, like caviar, gourmet soups, and bottled water, canisters of protein powder, plates and utensils. There was a large flat-screen TV and entertainment center. There was a communications desk against the wall that consisted of six TV monitors, with feeds from surveillance cams positioned in and out of the house, and a telephone.
“There’s about six big cases by the gun rack.” Gossamer’s voice came over the cordless phone in Keith’s hand. “Open them up.”
“Holy shit!” Keith cried.
Inside the sleek metal cases were not the usual semiautomatic handguns and hunting rifles that were on the gun rack against the wall. No, these were military-grade weapons: fully automatic combat rifles with laser sights, pistols converted to full auto; one case held an M-50 sniper rifle. These were not weapons a civilian would ever be allowed to possess. There must have been at least fifty assault rifles in the cases.
Keith started to hyperventilate. Was he terrified or excited or both?
“Listen to me, Keith!” Gossamer said. “I need you to get all those guns you into the car—”
“What? What? Hold on—”
“Those are not my guns, okay? I’ve been holding them for someone,” Gossamer continued. “Now I need you to get them to the people they’re due to before they’re found or burned up in the brush fires.”
“Wow,” Keith said. “Oh, wow.”
“Keith, I need you to focus, damn it! I’m shooting a whole war with a hundred extras blowing up all over the place tomorrow and I need you to do this little thing for me so we don’t land in the shit when I get back.”
Even in his state, Keith couldn’t resist pulling out his phone and taking a selfie of himself in front of the guns.
“Is that such a good idea?” Julia asked.
“It’s proof that this is all real,” Keith said, uploading the photo to his Instagram account. “That I’m not dreaming.”
“Who is that?” Ross said. “Keith! You’re not alone? You brought people into my panic room?”
I took the house phone from Keith and we led him back to the living room.
“Mr. Ross, this is Ravi Chandra Singh.” I put on my most professional voice. “We’re from Golden Sentinels.”
“Golden Sentinels, huh? Did Chuck send you?” Ross said. “Is that an English accent?”
“Julia and I are from England, sir. We’re from the London office. Keith called the agency when he heard about the brush fires and wanted us to help him secure the art and antiques in your house.”
There was a pause.
“Good thinking, Keith,” Ross said, grudgingly.
Keith mouthed “thank you” to me.
“So back to the guns,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Who were you holding them for? Where do you want them delivered?”
“Okay, this is strictly hush-hush, okay? I was keeping them safe as a favor for my friends in the CIA. They’re going to some freedom fighters in the Middle East.”
“I see.”
“So we can’t risk losing those guns if the house burns down or looters break in, you dig?”
“Of course.”
“So the CIA has a safe house down in North Hollywood. Best thing to do is load up the guns in one of the SUVs in the garage and drive it down there till the fires blow over.”
“That’s, like, down in the Valley,” Keith said. “Traffic’s gonna be all jammed up.”
“So what are you waiting for?” Ross said. “Get going!”
“But with the fires, there’s going to be police checkpoints,” Keith said.
“Might I suggest we take care of this so that you and Keith don’t get implicated if he’s stopped?” I said.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. You guys are the professionals, right? Keith, I hate to say it, but you’re out of your league with this one.”
“I agree!” Keith said eagerly.
I wrote down the address of the safe house.
“So, Keith, you can go home and write your screenplay or take care of your cat or whatever you do with your sad, desperate life. You’re off the hook for this one,” Ross said.
“Thanks, boss,” Keith said and ran out.
We watched him jump in his Prius and speed away.
“Before we go,” I turned back to Gossamer Ross on the phone, “is there anything else we ought to look out for? Does anyone else know about the guns? Is there anyone who might be after them?”
Ross paused as he seemed to be thinking.
“Maybe a couple of people,” he finally said. “My buddies in the Company said the Armenians might want their hands on those guns since they can either sell or use ’em. Some of the gangs that are linked to the cartels.”
“How might they know about these guns?” I asked.
“Word got out when my buddies managed to requisition them from some surplus at the manufacturers. They’re hard to come by on the black market, so all the gangs want their hands on these guns. It’s a status thing for them to have the latest military-grade arms. That’s another reason to get the guns out of my house. They might use the brush fire as their chance to break in and grab ’em.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
“You guys are the best,” Ross said. “Tell Chuck I’ll pay a bonus if you pull this off.”
And he hung up.
. . . If?
“Are we really doing this?” Julia asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I went into default professional mode before I knew I was doing it,” I said.
Or did the gods compel me?
“We should just call Chuck at the office. He can send some of the others to deal with this.”
“Good idea, and they can give us a lift back to our apartment.”
I dialed Golden Sentinels.
“You’ve reached Golden Sentinels Private Investigations and Security. I’m afraid no one is here to take your call. Please leave your name and number, and an investigator will call you back regarding your request.”
Beep.
“Where the hell is everybody?” I said. “Even the receptionist is out.”
I dialed Chuck’s smartphone.
“Chuck here.”
It sounded like he was driving.
“It’s Ravi. I just tried calling the office and got the answering machine. Is that normal?”
“Nothing’s normal today, Ravi,” Chuck said. “It’s the damn Santa Ana winds, makes the whole city go nuts. Everyone’s either out helping a client or off making sure their house isn’t going to get caught in the brush fire.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It might get there. This is a big one. I have to go hose down the roof, get my wife and dog to a hotel for the night if the fire reache
s my neighborhood.”
“So is anyone at the office available for a client?”
“Which client?”
“Gossamer Rand Ross.”
“One of our A-listers. Didn’t Darrell and Liz take care of that case earlier?”
“They did, and they’re off now. This is something new.”
“Can it wait?”
“It’s time-sensitive. He needs us to get a bunch of guns out of his house and into a safe house in the San Fernando Valley.”
“Did you say guns?”
“Said he was holding them for the CIA.”
“Oh, hell.” Chuck groaned. “Ross playing amateur secret agent again, and he’s not even in the country.”
“And Julia and I aren’t licensed to operate in the US, so—”
“Right, right. I don’t know what to tell you, Ravi. Gossamer Rand Ross is one of our biggest clients, and this is way above your pay grade. Hell, it’s way above our paygrade. I might ask you to do this as one of us, but at the same time I don’t have the right to put you in that position.”
“So what would you do if you were us?”
“Get in a car and just leave. Running guns as a favor for the CIA? That’s just asking for troub—ou—on’t—it—”
“Chuck? Chuck? You’re breaking up.”
“—to a—ad re—eption—I—it.”
The line went dead.
“We should just get into one of his cars and drive away, Ravi.”
“That’s what Chuck said,” I said.
We found the car keys on the coffee table in the living room. Lord Vishnu didn’t look eager to leave. In fact, he stood in the hallway, beckoning to me. Kali was dancing in the living room with Ganesha.
“Er, Ravi,” Julia said. “Keith left the gate open when he drove off.”
“Just as well. We need it open when we leave anyway.”
“There are people driving in,” Julia said. “I don’t think they were invited.”
I looked out the window, down towards the driveway. Two, three black sedans were coming into the estate. They stopped in the parking area and about half a dozen men got out. They wore a mixture of colorful T-shirts, cheap jackets, and sunglasses. They hadn’t seen us yet as they walked towards the house.
No wonder the gods were here partying. They’d been anticipating something like this would happen. I should have guessed.
“Into the panic room,” I said.
THIRTEEN
From Olivia’s recordings:
“I wasn’t completely at a loss for where to start. Hong Kong is a small place where everyone sort of knows each other. Connections and gossip are the social currency here, just like anywhere else, but you need to be an insider to make proper use of that.
“I wondered why Derek would publish a book about the shopping habits of the Chinese elite and their wives to start with. On the surface, it might seem like a gossipy bit of fluff, but the information in it must have got up the Mainland’s back, which prompted them to grab him off the streets of Hong Kong.
“I had questions: Had he just published it as another quickie cash-in? Where had he gotten the information from, which circles? Was the book a deliberate provocation in a larger game? Was it published under the aegis of the CIA through some front company that paid for it as some kind of propaganda tool to fuck with China? I wouldn’t put it past them since they still don’t really understand China at all and treat it like an old-school Cold War game, like they still do with Russia. Bloody spies and their games. Perhaps that’s why they grabbed Derek—to sweat him and see if he’s a CIA asset. This was why I didn’t tell bloody Marcie back at the office. I didn’t want her sticking her oar in. She could end up making things worse.
“My mission was to get Derek released and not be seen sticking my neck out. I still had to know who I was dealing with and how to get to them. I grilled his wife, Marie, to see if she was in on the book. She swore up and down that she didn’t know anything. She would have tried to talk him out of publishing the book if she knew he was going to piss off the Mainland authorities. She was on her last nerve since he’d been snatched, and the kids weren’t having a great time of it either.
“First port of call was tea with Uncle Ko. I’ve known Ko Chi Wan all my life. He was one of the old-school Triad leaders who went legitimate, parlayed his cash into proper, aboveboard businesses to get out of the game, though he still knew everyone in the Triad world. They treated him with respect and came to him for advice, even though he wasn’t officially in the Jiang Hu anymore. Uncle Ko had accounts with my dad’s bank and they socialized frequently, of course. He came to our house to play mahjong with my dad and his exclusive circle of friends every week.
“I brought Uncle Ko and his wife gifts from Harrods and had a pleasant tea where I asked him about the lay of the land. I asked about how the Jiang Hu was with the Chinese government. Uncle Ko confirmed that many of the bosses did deals with the Chinese to act as their eyes and ears on the ground in Hong Kong and Kowloon, and occasionally did ‘jobs’ for them.
“I asked Uncle Ko about the Wan Chai district, and he told me the area was overseen by Brother Bull and his men. Brother Bull was in his forties, been in charge for the last ten years, a gregarious bear of a man who enjoyed gambling, betting on the horses, and getting massages from the hookers in Wan Chai, many of whom he ran anyway.
“Brother Bull.
“Hm.
“That was a start.”
FOURTEEN
We watched the men go through the house, overturning furniture, going through the cupboards.
“They don’t look like ordinary burglars,” Julia said.
“They’re trying to make it look like a random break-in. Like they’re looters and vandals from the chaos of the brush fire,” I said.
Via the surveillance cameras, we watched them go through the house, picking up expensive items and perusing the artwork, which was too large for them to just drive off with, so they left them on the walls. There were at least four of them, and they didn’t look like the wannabe hipster kids who targeted the homes of stars after following them on social media. All in all, they were doing a rather halfhearted job of tossing the place. Their body language indicated they weren’t interested in just nicking cash and the telly. They had bulges under their jackets, which meant guns, and probably knew how to use them, though I suspected they weren’t all properly trained. These were, if not necessarily professionals, hardened criminals. Just what we needed. They were after something specific, which had to be the guns here in the panic room with us.
“They don’t seem to have found the door to the panic room yet,” Julia said.
“Thank fuck for that,” I said. “The way they’re going about it, I don’t think they’re going to leave until they find the guns, or suss out there’s a panic room here.”
“Or the brush fire reaches this part of the hills and they’re forced to leave,” Julia said. “Traffic back into town is going to be packed, and people will be stuck on the roads and freeways for hours.”
“But if this house is safe against the fire, they might just wait around here until nightfall,” I said. “There’s plenty of entertainment and food here to keep them amused for days.”
“Same goes for us in here,” Julia said.
I finally looked around.
“Christ. This panic room is larger than most flats in London,” I said.
There was a large bed in here, since Gossamer Rand Ross might have brought a girlfriend or mistress in here if he ever needed to hide out.
I took out my smartphone and dialed London. It wasn’t midnight there yet, so I didn’t feel bad about waking anyone up.
“Ravi,” David said. “What’s up, mate?”
It sounded like he was in a quiet drinking club, probably his usual place in Soho, just off Frith Street.
“David, I’m calling about my will.”
“You’re what? What’s happening out there?”
“I may have
gotten myself in a spot of bother, and, well, if things go completely pear-shaped, you may have to execute my will. It’s all in order, yeah?”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“Wish I were, mate. I just need you to make sure my money goes to my parents and my sister.”
“What about Julia?”
“She’s here with me, and she doesn’t think it’ll get that bad. I’m not so sure.”
“What’s brought this on?”
“Well, there’s the Santa Ana winds causing a brush fire in the hills, a stash of military-grade guns and weapons the client was holding on to for the CIA that he now needs us to move, and a bunch of heavily armed bastards who would probably kill us for them.”
“Hang on, is this Golden Sentinels business?”
“Sort of.”
“So why aren’t the LA guys dealing with it? Why you? You’re not bloody authorized to work cases there.”
“Because of the brush fire in the hills. The LA office is all MIA. They’re either off helping clients put out fires, some of them literally, or they’re off trying to save their own homes. Suffice to say, they’re scattered all over the city.”
“So, what, you’re trapped?”
“Julia and I are holed up in a panic room. We can probably wait them out, but . . .”
“Oh, bloody hell. Ravi, just call the police.”
“David, I’m a dark-skinned foreigner in a gun-ridden part of America in possession of enough guns to start a war in a small country. The police tend to get a bit trigger-happy in this type of situation, especially if they start thinking I’m a terrorist. There is no way this would go well for me.”
“You know, Ravi, what really worries me here is you’re not known for exaggerating things.”
“If anything, I may be downplaying some of this.”
“Right, I’m calling Roger. He needs to know about this.”
“What’s he going to do from over there? Who’s he going to call?”
“All right. You know what? I’m calling Marcie as well.”
“Why?”
“You said CIA, didn’t you? She’s got to know something about this. In the meantime, stop thinking about dying and just hide.”
Her Beautiful Monster Page 14