by Sam Stewart
Diego was patient. “This would stand up in court? In the courts of America?”
“No,” Ortega said. “But in America we’d watch him. We’d also make pretty damn sure he didn’t leave.”
“You have no other evidence?”
“No. Not yet.” Ortega played it cool and tried to make it sound imminent, knowing that it wasn’t. Knowing further that Slovo’s confession wouldn’t hold and that finding any hard-copy evidence to back it was a labyrinth of pain. And without that evidence, Billy’d take a walk.
Diego spread his hands. They were manicured and fat and their palms had been greased. Ortega had a feeling if he left this Diego, for something like a second, Diego’d call Billy and Billy’d disappear.
What he needed was an angle.
He looked at Estanchez who was leaning on the wall as Ortega himself was often leaning on the wall, a spectator, watchful, observant to a fault.
The alarm split the air.
37
Mack was out of ammo. Joanna had two more bullets for the Mag. “You better save it,” Mack said. The Uzi kept raking. “Where’s Rocky?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see him from the window.” She was ducked behind the counter.
“Why don’t you go into the closet like I told you?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t.
“You don’t get a Brownie point for dying,” Mack said. “You get hit, it’s gonna hurt.”
The firing let up. There was silence for a time.
She nodded. “I know.”
Mack came over now and joined her on the floor. The laboratory looked like a scene from Beirut, like a mini-Apocalypse.
She thought about war. “Tell me Mitchell’s okay.”
“Mitchell’s okay.—Feel better? He’s got at least one more life. This is only his eighth.”
“Cat,” she said.
“Yeah. I don’t know about me, I don’t know about you, but I know about the Cat.” He shrugged. “Little cat on a hot tin chopper. Jesus. I don’t know … For a time,” he said, “I figured I’d inherited his … what? … immortality or something. I couldn’t seem to die. Ever notice how death is never there when you need it?”
She looked at him. “You must’ve really hated him a lot.”
“Listen—why I hated him the most,” Mack said, “was for telling me to jump.”
Joanna cocked her head.
“We were up in that chopper and the chopper’s blowing up. We’re standing in the tail and your buddy says, jump. I looked at him. The man’s got the thousand-mile stare. I mean truly Messianic. He hits me. He says, jump, man! and suddenly he’s out. Gone. Flying. Got his arms like a bird. I had about a nanosecond left to think and I thought, what the fuck. It’s a better way to die.” Mack looked at her flatly. “It didn’t work out.”
She stared at him. “He doesn’t remember that,” she said.
“Like I told you. He was nuts. Man’s got a birdbrain so what do you expect?”
He lit a cigarette.
Joanna looked alarmed.
“What?”
“I just think there’s something flammable around.”
The Uzi picked up again.
“Yeah,” he said. “Us.”
And then thought about it. Raising his head, he looked up, looking over at the counter that was pretty much demolished—powders and liquids that were spilling onto glass. Nothing. He bellied to the opposite wall and then saw what he was looking for: a can of benzene.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. There’s something flammable around.”
What he needed was a bottle. He saw one, raised himself up against the counter, and got clipped in the left hand.
His reaction was to laugh. The universe really had it in for that hand. He made another try and got the bottle off the shelf and got over to Joanna.
She looked at him, frightened. “You’re hurt.”
“How it goes. What I want you to do is pour the fuel in the bottle.”
“The fuel?”
“Called a Molotov cocktail,” he said. “Just do it.” He looked around to find another bottle. The bullets kept flying. There was no other bottle. What he needed was a wick. “A rag,” he said. “Any kind of small piece of cloth.” There was nothing he could see.
Another hail hit the counter.
“How small?” she said.
“Small enough to shove it in a bottle.”
“My bikinis?”
“Good girl.”
Christ. She had to wriggle out of pantyhose first. It was funny. Later. If later ever came. If bullets weren’t whizzing and crashing on the counter. How your mother always told you you should wear clean underwear. In case, your mother said.
She produced them: a small pair of black lace bikinis, and stuffed them in the bottle. Mack lifted it, “Cheers,” and went over to the window. Squatted at the side of it, he reached for his lighter now and got the thing lit. He waited, looking over at the killer by the Jeep, at the hard spray of bullets. There was only one shot, one chance to get it ended. He rose up and tossed.
***
Ortega heard the booming explosion from the road. He said to Estanchez, “I think we got a war.”
Estanchez speeded up.
Diego had ordered him to rush to McAllister’s and turned to Ortega and asked to be excused. Ortega said, Comprendo, and hurried to the door, half-running to the street, where Patrolman Estanchez had been idling the engine of a black-and-white van. “Hurry up,” Estanchez said. The radio was screeching at them, “No! False alarm!”
Now the sky was on fire.
Estanchez, on the radio, calling out, “Fuego! Fuego! Veinte-dos!”
What the hell was going on?
The front gate was open. They turned, slammed in, and Ortega was out of the car, running past the burning inferno of the Jeep, and then charging to the house.
***
Mitchell said, “Christ. What took you so long?”
RULE #10:
38
Burt said to Cy, “Well … what the hell. Easy come, easy go. Isn’t that what you always say?”
Cy didn’t answer. He wondered what he’d done. Karmically. Astrologically. Which planet he’d offended in which other life. Why everybody else got away with playing edges while Cy toed the line.
He went over to Burt’s bar now and poured another Scotch. It was almost six o’clock. He’d been drinking since noon. Noon in L.A. when it was three in New York, when the stock market closed and the door slammed forever on the only real fortune that Cy had ever made; or that Cy ever would. He was doomed now to scrounging, to scrounging forever with the rest of the wimps, the losers, the nerds, the people who didn’t have the courage or the balls or the wit or the nerve to take a tiger by the tail.
“Well … we can still go for Mitchell,” Burt said. “As soon as this is over.”
“Yeah. I suppose.” Cy paced around. His confidence was shaken. The life had gone out of him. He’d eaten his heart.
Burt went over now and clicked on the Sony; a voice saying, Sale-a-thon! Seven Day Sale! while a Japanese car ate the Pennsylvania Turnpike and gurgled on its bones.
Burt said, “I think we’ll get the Lakers on cable.”
“The Lakers?” Cy said. “Come on, Burt. You really give a shit about the Lakers? The world just ended.”
“The world,” Burt said, “is continuing to turn. There. Look at that.”
The World was on the set—a fast-spinning globe and the title coming over it was Headlines Tonight. Terrific. And now we get the Newsmaker Team—the light black girl and the fellow with the teeth—and then Cy stopped caviling and squinted at the screen.
Slovo Abdajanian was marching to a car. Cuffed! Slovo!
“… brought in for questioning this morning in New York …”
Burt looked at Cy. Carol came in and stood silent at the bar.
“… providing detectives with the crucial information that would lead them to Spain, to a luxury villa on the c
oast of Majorca …”
Cy couldn’t move. He kept staring at the screen, at the luxury villa and the burnt-out Jeep and the bullet-spattered lab … the room with the press … the tape recorder hidden in the pack of cigarettes …
“… where William McAllister and Jackie Lessandro …”
“It’s over,” Carol said.
“… However …”
Cy sat.
“…in a turn of events that astounded the police …”
Carol made a noise.
Mitchell and another guy were grinning at the mikes, then waving them away.
“… and clearly Mr. Mitchell was the hero of the night in what, just as clearly, is the story of the year. And of course we’ll have a detailed update at eleven. In the meanwhile, Marcie—”
“In the meanwhile, Glenn, we’ve got a bulletin from Chad, where the hostages—”
Carol went and clicked off the set.
There was silence in the room.
Carol said, “The what? He’s the hero of the what?”
“Of the year,” Burt said.
“Of the night,” Cy corrected. “It’s the story of the year.”
“Oh,” Burt said. There was silence for a time. “Where’re you going?” he said to Cy.
“Out. I’ll be back. I got something in the car.”
***
What he had in the car was a telephone. He got to the girl at Information. “Yeah,” he said. “Give me the number for Paramount.… Darling? What’re you hitting me with ‘Paramount what?’ Paramount Films. I mean, shit … is this Hollywood or Kansas?” Cy said. “Yeah … Okay.…” He dialed and got through. “Okay,” he said quickly, “now I don’t want a runaround, I want to talk to Ned. Are you listening? You tell him Cy Tate’s on the phone. Like in Tate Pharmaceuticals. You tell him I’ve tied up, tight and exclusive, the story of the year.… That story, yeah.”
Cy waited, lit a Kent from the dashboard lighter.
“Ned baby? Yeah.… Uh-huh. Exactly. It’s an action movie. Right.… Are you kidding me? Mitchell? We’re like brothers.… Uh-huh. Okay, so the bidding starts at two million dollars but I thought you’d like to talk.… Uh-huh. Breakfast. Uh-huh. Polo Lounge at seven sounds good.… Uh-huh. Okay.”
Cy leaned back again and looked at his grinning reflection in the mirror.
Virtue, he thought, always triumphed in the end.
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
In order of their appearance:
Joan Collins was the star of Dynasty, the popular primetime soap, in which she played an arrogant, scheming bitch. The show, about the lives and loves of the super-rich, ran from 1981 to 1989.
“Un-California Activities Committee.” This is Leo’s spin on the US Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee which in 1947 investigated political incorrectness in Hollywood.
Bhopal (India) in 1984 was the scene of a massive release of toxic gas from a Union Carbide pesticide factory. It was said to have killed thousands.
Johnson & Johnson. In 1982, an unknown psycho tampered with J&J’s Tylenol capsules—filled them with cyanide, resealed the bottles, and placed them on the shelves of Chicago stores. Seven people died.
Bryant Gumbel was cohost of the morning news show, Today, from 1982 to 1997.
High Noon, the classic gunfighter Western. Gary Cooper as the marshall, Grace Kelly as his wife.
Linda Evans played the Nicegirl on Dynasty and—like Collins—got endlessly uninteresting attention from the press.
Johnny Carson was the longtime (1962-92) host of NBC’s Tonight Show. From the mid-80s on he took frequent vacations and Joan Rivers subbed.
Mickey Mantle was a Hall of Fame player for the New York Yankees.
Gene Krupa was a drummer.
David Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, was indicted for embezzlement and forging actors’ checks; the actor Stacy Keach went to jail for holding coke.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary” was a nursery rhyme.
Redford in The Candidate. Robert Redford at the age of 35 and the height of his handsomeness, starred in The Candidate, possibly the best movie ever made about contemporary American politics
In the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate, Kennedy looked cool, handsome, composed and Nixon looked sweaty, speedy-eyed, shifty. As does Cy.
Leonard Nimoy, who’d made his name playing Spock on StarTrek, hosted In Search Of, a popular tabloid television series that investigated spooky paranormal events.
Wang computers were state-of-the-art in the 1980’s
The Deerhunter and Rambo were movies about POWs in Vietnam.
Don Johnson was the star of Miami Vice from 1984 to 1989; Tab Hunter starred in movies of the ’50’s and ’60’s
Juan Valdez was the TV commercial spokesman for Columbian coffee.
The comedan Richard Pryor cooked dope the wrong way and it exploded in his face.
“Buck Rogers Of the 25th Century”, the first sci-fi hero, was featured in comic books, through the 1980’s.
Nancy Drew was a fictional teenage detective in an endless series of popular novels.
Diana Vreeland was the editor of Vogue who did, in fact, look like the Wizard of Oz witch.
“Jet-setter” Stavros Niarchos was a billionaire Greek shipping tycoon. Reubens was a famous Broadway delicatessen that named sandwiches after celebrities.
Jane Fonda, at the time, was starring in a series of excercise tapes for menopausal women. Mack, seeing Mitchell doing stretches in the snow, therefore makes the crack
Charlie Chan was a fictional Chinese detective in novels, movies, radio and TV. Best known for dialog that sounded like the stuff on a fortune-cookie.
Carmen Miranda (aka “The Brazilian Bombshell”) was a singer-dancer in Hollywood musicals famous for her fruit-decorated hats. Except by pun, she has no relation to the Miranda Warning.
“Who knows … what evil … lurks … in the hearts of men?” was the opening teaser for a popular (radio, television, comic book, film) series called The Shadow.
Evita was Evita Peron, the activist wife of Argentine President Juan Peron, and of course the leading character in the musical Evita.
Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker were gaudy televangelists brought down by sex and money scandals (are there any other kind?) in 1987. At the height of their ostentation, according to the press, they had an air-conditioned dog house on their sprawling estate.
In the Iran-Contra scandal (1985-87) Oliver North was in charge of illegally selling arms to Iran. The profits, hidden in a numbered Swiss bank account, were slated to be used to illegally fund the Contras—the Nicaraguan rebels. However, $10 million was lost when North forgot the number of the numbered account.
Ludes. Quaaludes. A pharmaceutical downer.
In the late ’80s, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones was still strutting viable stuff. Among the band’s hits was Sympathy for the Devil and Time is On My Side.
Robert Vesco fled the US for the Caribbean with his multi-milliions intact in order to avoid charges of securities fraud. Ferdinand Marcos, the deposed dictator of the Philippines, fled to Hawaii in 1986.
Nixon, the deposed US president. Often took refuge at the California estate of a man named Walter Annenberg. The Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled from Iran, spent 15 years in Paris till the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah and restored the theocracy.
The Peter Principle, derived from a book of the same name, was the theory that in hierarchies, everybody rises “to his level of incompetence.”
F. Lee Bailey was a high-profile criminal defense attorney often hired by the rich and infamous. His last notable case, in 1995 was the defense of O.J. Simpson.
Huey. A military helicopter.
Gary Gilmore was a stone-cold killer who became a kind of national anti-hero through media fascination. At his own request, he was executed by a Utah firing squad, a fate he preferred to a life sentence.
Tom Selleck starred in the popular TV series, Magnum, PI. He was dark-haired an
d mustached so when Joanna sees the dark-haired mustached Jackie, the likeness comes to mind.
Bela Lugosi was a well-known actor in horror films and spoke with a lugubrious Hungarian accent.
Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, was a brutally hilarious classic film.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Hot Toddy” lyrics by Herb Hendler, music by Ralph Flanagan, copyright © 1953, 1981 by Valley Entertainment Enterprises Inc. (Coachella Music Inc.). Used by permission.
Payback by Sam Stewart. Copyright © 1988
by Linda Stewart.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0925-6
Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com