Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “Unfortunately, as it turns out, this ain’t the best place for me and Afro-Boy t’attempt a covert surveillance,” Emdee said once we were parked.

  “Shane, you’re gonna have to go in there and check it out for us,” Broadway added.

  “Me?”

  “We’re unwelcome personages in there,” Broadway said. “A month ago, donkey brain over there, attempted to end the criminal career of one Boris Zikofsky, a known L.A. hitter and Odessa shit ball.”

  “The man deserved the bust,” Emdee protested.

  “Instead of following this hat basher into the parking lot and cuffing him out there like he’s supposed to, the Hillbilly Prince badges the motherfucker right in the restaurant without backup, and starts World War Three. My man ended up by dancing Boris through a pricey pastry cart from fifteen hundred Czarist Russia. Cost the department seven grand. The Loot shit a blintz.”

  “Not my best polka,” Emdee admitted.

  “So if we go in there, we’re gonna get made, turned around, and run right back out, then reported to the lieutenant.” Broadway handed me an old, taped-together digital camera. “Take lots of pictures.”

  “I don’t even know who the players are. Who do I take pictures of?”

  “Everybody.” Broadway reached into the glove box and retrieved a big, clunky tape recorder with a directional mike that was about the size of a Kleenex box.

  “What happened to all our miniaturized, state-of-the-art goodies?” I said.

  Broadway handed the recorder to me and said, “If you can find the complaint box up on five, slip it in as the saying goes.”

  Then he pointed at the camera. “No flash. It’s digital, but just barely.” He smiled. “Directional mike on this tape recorder has a short, so watch the transmission light to make sure it’s recording.”

  “What are you two gonna be doing?”

  Emdee switched on the radio. The Lakers game was in the third quarter. He gave me a lazy smile.

  “Right,” I said, and headed across the street.

  I decided not to go in through the front. I didn’t want to be seen, so I went to the rear of the restaurant.

  The back of the Russian Roulette was littered with empty produce boxes and used-up liquor bottles. I looked in the trash and found some soft lettuce heads that didn’t look too bad. I put my clunky camera and recorder in one of the boxes, then arranged five heads of wilted lettuce on top. I took off my jacket, tied it around my waist, and rolled up my shirt sleeves.

  With this brilliant on-the-fly disguise in place, I carried the rotting produce right back into the restaurant.

  The kitchen was noisy and full of cooks turning out that vinegary smelling food that Balkan people seem to love. Without warning, a burly guy in a white tunic who looked like a cross between Boris Spassky and Wolfgang Puck grabbed me and started rattling away in some language with way too many consonants.

  “Sorry, pal, I’m just the relief driver,” I said into his guttural windstorm. “No speaky da Rooskie,” trying to do it like some zooted out delivery guy from Saugus.

  He ranted some more Russian at me then grabbed a head of rotting lettuce out of the box and shook it under my nose.

  “No can this…this…” He was sputtering. “Thing no to eat!” Then in frustration he turned to find somebody who could speak my language.

  As soon as he was gone, I set the box down, retrieved my camera and tape and went lickity-splitting down the hall connecting the kitchen and restaurant, moving past two doors marked () and ( ), which I figured were either Egyptian crypts or Russian toilets.

  I moved into the back of the dining room. The place was packed and noisy. The predominant language sounded Eastern European—Armenian or Russian. I scanned the room looking for Ringerman.

  Halfway down, seated in a wall booth, there he was. Next to him sat Bimini Wright, the Ice Goddess with the silver Jag from the funeral.

  I crowded behind a flower arrangement and took pictures of everybody in the restaurant. Then some patrons in the booth next to Ringerman’s got up to look at the pastry table. Apparently the priceless rolling cart hadn’t made it back from antique repair. I slipped down the aisle between tables and slid into the recently vacated spot next to my targets. Then I turned on the tape and laid it under my jacket close to the next table.

  They were speaking softly in Russian. It surprised me that Ringerman and Wright, two Americans, would choose to converse in a foreign language. I couldn’t understand a word. They acted like people who were plotting something. I taped them for about ten minutes until the people from my borrowed booth headed back, carrying dessert plates. Then I bailed.

  Minutes later, I was back in the Navigator, where Broadway and Perry were still listening to the Lakers game.

  “You see him?” Broadway asked.

  I scrolled through some digital shots of the two of them.

  “Bimini Wright?” Broadway said as soon as he saw her picture. “Maybe the Israelis are using Eddie to build a bridge to the CIA.” He looked up at Perry. “Something is sure as shit in the wind.” Then he turned to me. “What were they talking about in there?”

  “Beats the hell outta me.” I punched Play on the tape recorder and we listened while their whispered voices, speaking Russian, filled the car.

  38

  We pulled out of Russian Town while Emdee hunched over the tape recorder in the front seat with an open notebook on his lap, translating the conversation. It surprised me that this transplant from South Carolina actually spoke Russian. These two were full of surprises. Listening to my bad recording, I could barely distinguish Eddie Ringerman’s whispered baritone or Bimini Wright’s elegant soprano. They spoke softly, their voices all but drowned out by the loud background chatter in the restaurant.

  “Since they’re both American, why are they talking in Russian?” I asked.

  “They’re both fluent. Both went to spy school. It’s the kinda stuff these spooks live for,” Broadway said. “Besides, it puts a crick in our dicks when we try to eavesdrop. Now this ignorant cracker gets to practice his night-school Russian.”

  I glanced out the rear window of the Navigator at traffic piling up at a stoplight half a block behind us. Suddenly, the headlights on a blue Ford Escort swung wide and the car roared around waiting traffic into the oncoming lane. It ran the light and rushed up the street after us.

  “She’s bitching about something called the Eighty-five Problem,” Emdee was saying, playing a section of the tape over. “It happened when she was stationed in Moscow. She’s pissed. Eddie is trying to calm her down.”

  “Bimini Wright was at the U.S. embassy in Moscow for ten years in the mid-eighties and nineties,” Broadway said as the tape ran out.

  “This all you got?” Emdee complained.

  “Yeah. I had to leave the booth I was in.”

  I was still looking out the rear window. The blue Escort now ducked in behind a Jeep Cherokee, trying to hide.

  “Hey, Roger, make a right.”

  “I don’t want to make a right,” Broadway said. “I’d like to go back to Parker Center.”

  “How’d you like to go back to the Tishman Building?”

  Broadway grabbed the rearview mirror and repositioned it.

  “Which one?”

  “Behind the Jeep Cherokee. The blue Escort.”

  “Get serious,” he growled. “Nobody runs a tail in an Escort. They got less horsepower than a Japanese leaf blower.”

  “Turn right and see what happens.”

  Roger hung a hard right and started down Pico. A few seconds later we saw the Escort make the same right and follow.

  “Go right again,” I said.

  Roger swung onto a residential street. Only this time, after he rounded the corner, he didn’t stick around to watch. He just floored it. We flew down the narrow street over speed bumps that launched the Navigator into the air each time we hit. I wasn’t buckled in and shot up into the headliner with the first landing, slamming my head
into the roof.

  “Ooo-ee!” Rowdy shrieked, loving it.

  When Roger got to the end of the street he hung a U and headed straight back toward the pursuing Escort. The two guys in the front seat suddenly started rubbernecking houses, pretending to be looking for an address.

  “Look at these two dickwads,” Broadway said. “Comedy theater.”

  We passed them and turned back onto Pico the way we came.

  “We need to get outta here, Roger. One of those guys was the steroid case who walked us through the Tishman yesterday.”

  “Danny Zant, the FBI area commander,” Roger said, and floored it again, heading for the freeway.

  Just as he did, two more unmarked Toyotas skidded onto Pico, leaning sideways, burning rubber from all four tires with the turn. “Two more bogies,” I said. “Blue Toyotas.”

  Roger had his foot all the way to the floor and the engine in the black Navigator was in a full-throated roar. He found an on ramp for the San Pedro Freeway and flew up onto the eight lanes of concrete, heading east. The next few minutes were a white-knuckle experience. We merged with unusually heavy 11 P.M. traffic. Roger was smoking around slower cars, tailgating, honking his horn, and passing in the service lane. Despite all his frantic driving, every time I looked back, the three federal sedans were still right back there.

  “Can’t you shake these assholes?” I said. “They’re not in Ferraris, it’s a fucking Escort and two Toyotas.”

  “Gotta have more than just stock blocks under the hood,” Broadway said.

  He put more foot into it, careening between slower vehicles, finally hitting the off ramp at Fifth Street and roaring down the hill toward Parker Center.

  “Let’s see if these humps want to have it out in the police garage,” he said.

  He broke a red light at Sixth, and another at Wilshire, then hung another right and headed straight toward the Glass House. The huge, boxy building loomed in front of us.

  “Going under,” Broadway shouted, sounding like a crazed sub commander as he drove into the garage.

  He grabbed his badge, and as we roared up to the guard shack, held his tin out to the rookie probationer guarding the parking structure and frantically signaled the young cop to raise the electronic gate arm. The wooden bar went up and we went down.

  I turned just in time to see the Escort flying into the garage after us. The driver didn’t wait for the closing arm. He broke right through, snapping it off. Splintered wood went flying. The two Toyotas followed.

  The startled police rookie pulled his gun and ran down the ramp. A siren went off somewhere.

  Roger held the SUV in a hard right, our tires squealing loudly on the concrete as we descended level after level. Emdee pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster and laid it on his lap.

  “You aren’t really planning on shooting FBI agents are you?” I asked.

  “Depends,” Rowdy answered, his mouth set in a hard line.

  We finally reached the bottom level, four floors below the street, and were flying toward a cement wall.

  “Bottom floor,” Broadway announced. “Perfume and body bags.” The Navigator spun right, and skidded to a stop, inches from the concrete. We bailed out just as the federal sedans squealed to a stop behind us. Doors flew open and six guys with thick necks and hard faces jumped out. Everybody had a badge in one hand and a gun in the other. Then came the shout-off.

  “You’re under arrest! FBI!”

  “Stick it up your ass, Joe Bob!”

  “Federal agents! Throw the guns down! Assume the position!”

  “Eat me!”

  The sound of police sirens now filled the garage, growing louder, echoing in our ears. Seconds later four squad cars, called in by the garage probationer, roared down the ramp and careened to a stop. Eight uniforms from the mid-watch jumped out with guns drawn. I heard more running footsteps pounding on the pavement.

  “LAPD! Drop your weapons,” a burly uniformed sergeant from an L-car boomed. It was chaos. Everybody was pointing guns, waving badges and screaming.

  Then the elevator on the far side of the garage opened and Tony Filosiani charged out, gun in hand. The garage security alarm sounded in his office and had brought him running.

  “What the fuck is this?” the Day-Glo Dago bellowed.

  “These men are under arrest for failure to heed a direct order from the head of California Homeland Security,” Agent Zant shouted hotly. “We’re FBI! They’re coming with us!”

  “No they’re not,” Tony said.

  “This is a federal issue,” Zant brayed. “It involves national security.”

  “No it ain’t,” Tony yelled back. “It’s the LAPD garage, and it involves your fuckin’ imminent arrest and custody.”

  Zant looked startled.

  “You guys may not have noticed, but you’re way the fuck outnumbered here,” Tony growled.

  The FBI agents slowly turned. By now thirty cops had them surrounded with their guns drawn. Some were in uniforms, some in plainclothes. The feds turned back to Tony.

  “And just who the hell are you, fat boy?” Zant asked angrily.

  “I’m the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and you six cherries got thirty seconds to get off LAPD property. Failure to comply gets you a bunk downtown.”

  “We’re federal agents,” the big, pockmarked ASAC said. “You can’t jail us. Are you nuts?”

  “You obviously ain’t been reading my press releases,” Tony sneered.

  After a minute of indecision, Zant knew he was beaten. He motioned to the others and they got into their cars.

  What followed was low comedy. Everyone was so jammed in down there that turning their vehicles around was next to impossible. Finally they got it done and a trail of red taillights retreated up the ramp.

  Tony’s chest was still heaving, out of breath from all the adrenaline. “This parking lot ain’t secure,” he finally said. “We gotta get a metal arm on that entrance.” Then he turned and pointed at me. “This was supposed to be a covert op. Where’s the fucking marching band?”

  “I think this Navigator may still have a few bugs on it,” Broadway said.

  “All three of you. My office! Five minutes!” Then Tony turned and strode back to the elevator and left us there.

  “We’re in deep doo,” Broadway said.

  “Yeah, but at least we won’t have to listen to Barry Manilow,” I answered.

  39

  You guys were supposed to be running a low-profile no-see-um ground op, but less than ten hours after you leave this office, half a dozen feds chase ya into the police garage.” Tony was a red-faced, five-and-a-half-foot blood pressure problem, standing in the center of his office with his feet spread, glaring at Rowdy and Snitch, Cubio and me.

  “Don’t you get it?” Tony continued. “If the humps down at Homeland decide to make all of you disappear, I can’t do shit. It’s worse than just them catching you out there disobeying Virtue’s direct orders, they also probably know exactly how you’re doing it.”

  “How?” I asked. “All we did was go to a Lakers game and to a Russian restaurant.”

  He crossed to his desk, retrieved a small box, and emptied it onto his blotter. Ten or twelve miniaturized bugs, none of them any bigger than the transmitter we pulled off the Fairlane spilled out onto his desktop.

  “So far this is what Sam Oxman in Computer Services found in our phones and ceiling fixtures. We also turned up scans on half a dozen computers, including Alexa’s and the main databank at CTB. So far, thank God, we haven’t found anything in the ME’s office.”

  “Keep looking,” I said. “There has to be something down there.”

  “We’re still on it, but after finding this stuff, I also notified the DA and the Superior Court. If somebody wants info on our activities this bad, it could also extend to other branches of municipal law enforcement, like prosecutors and judges.”

  I glanced around the office with concern and Tony waved my look off.

>   “This room is clean now,” he said. “We went through it twice. Found four transmitters on this floor alone. Somebody in our own house must be planting these things, ’cause security’s too tight for anybody else to get in here and do it. I’m gonna give everybody in ESD a close look and a lie-detector test.” He grabbed up a couple of the bugs from the blotter and held them up. “Some of this stuff is so new we’ve never seen anything like it before. We had to use a microwave zap to shut the damn things off. They’ve got batteries the size of a pinhead, and they’re sound activated. They run on such low power that our ESD analyst said they could have up to a twenty-year life.”

  “If ya let hornets nest in yer outhouse, it’s hard t’get pissed when they buzz down and sting yer ass,” Emdee contributed wisely. Tony groaned at the analogy.

  “Do you think these came from Americypher Technologies?” I said, looking at Emdee and Roger. Each picked up a bug and studied it. It was hard to tell because none of them had brand markings. Finally, Broadway shrugged.

  “Okay, we’re running completely without cover now,” Tony said. “I expect to hear from Robert Virtue any minute. He’s bound t’ sic his bunch of crewcuts on us. He’s also probably gonna demand I hand the three of you over for obstructing justice—failing to obey a direct order from Homeland. Depending on what’s going on, they might even be able to gin that up into a threat against national security.”

  Tony picked up the transmitters and put them back in the box. “The FISA court doesn’t have to divulge its reasons for approving wiretaps or arrest warrants. They can bust you and hold you without ever saying why. We can’t beat these guys. Once you go into the system, you could be reclassified as enemy combatants or people of interest—whatever they need to put you on ice till this is over.”

  The room got very quiet.

  Cubio said, “I think, under the circumstances, we need to put these men into a deep-cover assignment. Get them the hell out of here, find a secure location, and have them report in on SAT phones.”

  “I agree.” Tony nodded.