Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  I was praying Stanislov Bambarak, Eddie Ringerman, and Bimini Wright were going to help me keep that goal alive.

  53

  “I’m bloody tired of waiting,” Stan said, glaring at his watch. “Give us a bell if you ever decide to get serious about this.”

  We were standing on the end of the Santa Monica Pier in the blazing noontime sun waiting for the others to arrive. Both of us had our coats off. A quarter mile up the beach I could see the Shutters Hotel where I stayed with my family last night. Just as Stan turned to go, Broadway’s car pulled up and parked. Roger got out, and then the passenger door opened, and Bimini Wright, looking very hot in a sundress and heels, joined him. They started walking toward us.

  “What’s she doing here?” Stanislov glowered at the beautiful CIA station chief who was now only twenty or thirty yards away.

  “Calm down, Stan.”

  He threw his coat over his shoulder and started to walk away.

  I grabbed his arm. “I told you I had something that would interest you. You don’t get to hear it unless you stick around.”

  “Not interested.”

  This was in danger of unraveling before it got started, so I said, “What if I can put Sammy Petrovitch in Pelican Bay for murder? I also have a decent shot at getting his brother Iggy on conspiracy to commit.”

  Stanislov stopped walking and looked at me. “If you could really do that, we bloody well wouldn’t be standing out here gassing about it, would we?”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  But I had him interested, so I went ahead and told him about the ballistics match on the bullet that killed Martin Kobronovitch. “If Sammy was the triggerman on both hits, and if we match the bullets to a gun in his possession, he’s gone.”

  “Those are big ifs,” Stan said. He shifted his weight and looked at Bimini Wright, who slowed as she approached. You could feel the negativity jolting back and forth between them like deadly arcs of electricity.

  “Roger,” she said, looking at the handsome African-American detective, as they came to a stop where we were standing. “You didn’t say anything about this son-of-a-bitch being here. If he’s involved, I’m gone.”

  “Strange remark from a woman who flat-backed half my Moscow Bureau,” Stanislov growled nastily.

  “Hey, Stan, it’s not my fault all you recruited was a bunch of alcoholic hard-ons.”

  Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emdee Perry approaching with Eddie Ringerman. It distracted Bimini and Stan, and they both turned as the two men approached.

  “Now we got the whole, bloomin’ free world,” Stan groused.

  “I already filled Eddie in on what we’re up to,” Emdee said as they joined us.

  “Anybody want a Coke or something?” Broadway offered, ever the perfect host.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Bimini snapped.

  “To start with, I want to compare notes on one fact,” I said quickly before our guests sprinted to their cars. “All of us have computer leaks. Our ESD technicians think the bugs were manufactured by a company here in L.A. called Americypher Technologies. I’m assuming your people have made similar discoveries.”

  “Not exactly news,” Eddie Ringerman countered, removing his coat in the heat, revealing bulging biceps under his short-sleeved shirt.

  “The original owner of that company, Calvin Lerner, was an Israeli national who disappeared ten years ago,” I continued. “Our financial crimes investigators told us yesterday that Lerner’s widow is now listed as the CEO, but she isn’t really running the company. It looks like she’s just some kind of management front. We also found out that Americypher is really owned by a private Bahamian holding company called Washington Industries. Our analysts haven’t been able to penetrate the stockholders list yet, but since Americypher sells surveillance equipment to everyone in the intelligence community, if they’re owned by the wrong people, it could be a problem.”

  Ringerman rocked back on his heels and glanced at Bimini Wright before responding. “You should be able to penetrate a Bahamian corporation with the IRS.”

  “Our Financial Crimes division thinks Washington Industries is a burn company that has all their assets and stockholder tax records in numbered accounts,” I said. “They think if we lean on them too hard, they’ll transfer the assets and corporate paperwork to Europe and all we’ll get is a shell.”

  “The Petrovitches own it,” Stanislov interrupted, his gravely voice almost lost on the warm breeze.

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “We also traced those surveillance devices,” he continued. “Washington Industries funnels cash back to the Petrovitches’ holding company, Patriot Industries, through a Swiss bank. You need better financial analysts.”

  I looked at Eddie Ringerman. Something was going on with him. He looked stricken, so I said, “Are you just an interested spectator or do you want to add to this?”

  Eddie hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “Davide Andrazack found seven Americypher bugs inside our embassy and several in the ambassador’s car. If the Petrovitches are secret partners in that Bahamian company, then it’s a major problem because Davide found out that those bugs were reverse engineered. They operate on two frequencies. One broadcasts to the office of Homeland Security, who I guess had them installed, but the other frequency transmits to a site somewhere in Century City. Davide was murdered before he could trace it. Since then, that second receiver went dark. We tried to triangulate on it, but whoever owns it took it down. Now that it’s shut off, we’ll never find it.” He paused, then added, “As an interesting point of fact, the Petrovitches have new offices in Century City,” giving me a location for Alexa’s warrant.

  “Without busting that receiver, you don’t have much of anything,” Bimini observed.

  Everybody pondered that for a moment before Stanislov said, “This is all frightfully interesting, but I don’t see what any of it has to do with catching the Petrovitches.”

  So I told them what Roger, Emdee, and I had planned, and how we needed everybody’s help to back us up if things went wrong.

  When I was finished, Stanislov just stood there frowning. “Rather dicey, that,” he growled. “I certainly can’t involve my embassy on that kind of risky project, but I wish you blokes all the best.”

  Then he turned and, without another word, just lumbered off the pier. The rest of us watched him go.

  “I’m afraid I’m with him,” Eddie Ringerman said. “My embassy won’t sign up for anything like that either. Hope you pull it off.”

  He followed Bambarak into the parking lot.

  I felt my spirits sinking. We couldn’t go it alone. That left only Bimini Wright.

  “What’s your excuse?” Broadway asked her.

  “Shit, fellas, this is a domestic espionage situation. CIA is tasked to international cases only. I’d like to pitch in, but if I took a swing at something like this, the FBI and Homeland would shit a brick and I’d bitch up a twenty-year ride. Sorry.”

  She turned and followed the other two off the pier.

  Once the three of us were standing there alone, I turned to Broadway and Perry. “Whose dumb-ass idea was this anyway?” Since it was mine, nobody answered. “We could use a new plan, guys,” I said. “Whatta you think?”

  “I think, besides learning those bugs were set by Virtue and reverse engineered by someone, the filly looks the best going away,” Emdee drawled, watching Bimini’s long, sexy stride.

  “We could try and recruit a CTB surveillance team,” Broadway suggested. “Most of our Special Ops cowboys have more testosterone than sense. We’d have to do it without sanction and that could cause them trouble. But if we make it a challenge, maybe we could recruit a few and get them to keep it on the DL so the Loot doesn’t fall on us.”

  The CTB surveillance teams were mostly reassigned hard-ons from SIS or SWAT who loved a good dust-up. But still, it did involve some career jeopardy.

  “Okay,” I told them, “
but I’m not throwing down on this guy unless we have backup.”

  “Say no more, Joe Bob. Rowdy and Snitch always deliver.”

  54

  Take the entire top floor of a Century City high-rise; buy every bad Russian painting you can find; stick them in overdone gilt frames, then hire Donald Trump’s decorator, and you have a reasonable idea of what the offices of Petrovitch Industries looked like. There was enough nude statuary and crystal swag to decorate every whorehouse in New Orleans.

  The receptionist was a beautiful Russian girl with flawless skin, piercing eyes, and a sculpted jaw. She also had a bitchy attitude and a graceful swan neck acceptable for wringing.

  I was standing with Danny Dark and Sid Cooper, two detectives from the Financial Crimes Division. They were both carrying thick briefcases with notebook computers inside.

  “And this is regarding?” my Russian goddess asked. Only the slightest sound of the Ukraine still remained in her clipped, chilly presentation.

  “I will only discuss it with Samoyla himself,” I said.

  “And he won’t agree to see you unless you first state the nature of your business,” she replied coldly. Ice started to form on the mirror behind her.

  I laid my temporary creds down on the marble desk. “See if you can get Mr. Petrovitch to change his mind so he won’t have to take an uncomfortable ride chained to the inside of a big gray bus.”

  “Really?” she said, arching plucked eyebrows as if she would really like to see me try that.

  I held my ground under the weight of her disapproving stare, but after a second she folded, and deserted her post like an Afghan army regular. On her way past, she reached for my ID and started to leave with it. I grabbed her wrist.

  “Where are you going with that?”

  “I have to show Mr. Petrovitch.”

  “You don’t get to take it. You tell him you saw it and then he gets to come and see it for himself. That’s the way it works.” I was playing it very ballsy and tough for a guy in a Kmart suit, standing in a lobby surrounded by two million dollars worth of crystal and art. But what the hey. You gotta believe in yourself, as I’m so fond of telling everyone.

  After a minute, the receptionist departed and the three of us were left alone to study a huge lobby painting of thousands of Cossacks on horseback charging across a wooded field. Glorious carnage and romantic death.

  We waited for almost five silent minutes before the Russian princess returned. “If you’re the one in charge, he’ll see only you,” she intoned coldly.

  I turned to the financial dicks. “You guys wait here while I get this guy set up.”

  She led me away from Cooper and Dark, down a hallway full of art depicting the Imperials. Peter, Ivan, and Alexander. The Russians have produced a lot of Imperials. Most of them in braided jackets with warlike personas.

  I was ushered through a Russian Barbie section where half a dozen beautiful blonde secretaries, all perfectly groomed with arched backs and jutting breasts, typed diligently at computers. I followed my princess into an executive suite that faced the Avenue of the Stars. A Louis XV desk and a high-backed swivel chair covered with expensive gold brocade sat in front of a glass wall overlooking the street twenty stories below.

  “He’ll be here shortly,” she clipped. Almost no accent this time. I had to really strain to hear it now. She left me standing there and closed the door. After a minute alone, the side door opened and the most frighteningly ugly man I have ever seen walked into the office. His booking picture didn’t begin to capture the essence of him. In person, he radiated evil.

  Where to begin?

  He was a dermatological mess—much more so than I had realized from the photograph. Scar tissue everywhere. I’ve seen a lot of scars, even have my share, just not ones where the crude stitching so horribly altered what had been there before. All that was left was a hideous mask. He had at the same time, both a ghoulish smile and a frightening scowl. This amazing expression was accomplished because his restitched mouth curved up on one side with a scar that ended in the middle of his left cheek. On the other side, the scowl side, the scar collapsed down from the corner of his mouth to his chin, ending at his destroyed uneven jaw line. It was as if the Riddler had gone into a psychopathic rage, ripped his own mouth wide open, then stitched the mess back together using a staple gun.

  He was huge, so those metric measurements now translated to about six-foot-eight and almost three hundred fifty pounds. He had shoulders like a water buffalo and hands the size of anvils. All that was missing were the neck bolts.

  “Shto tibe nado?” he said, in Russian. His voice was a strange whispery squeak from vocal cords wasted in all that carnage.

  “Sammy Petrovitch?” I asked, knowing there couldn’t be two like this.

  “Da?”

  “You speak English?” I said, wondering if it was possible that this guy could have been in the U.S. since ’ninety-five and still not speak the language.

  “Ya, I speak. Vat is?” he said. It was not that his voice was high, as much as it was a whistling, muted wheeze. I’d never heard anything quite like it.

  “I have a subpoena to gather up all of the records for Patriot Petroleum,” I said, holding out the paperwork. He didn’t look at it, didn’t care about it. But that’s okay. Neither did I.

  “I also have two financial crimes detectives in the lobby who need access to your computers and all the electronic records and transactions for that same company.”

  “We have done nothing,” he squeaked. “We have rights.”

  Time to throw sand in the giant’s eyes. “The only right you have is the right to suck my dick, yakoff.”

  His huge, flat brow furrowed. Rage began to climb up his neck and redden his destroyed face.

  “Did you hear me, dummy? You’re under investigation for running a federal gas tax scam. This subpoena orders you to give my detectives full access to your computers. Then we’ll see about getting you and your limp-dick brother, Igor, downtown to answer some more important felony charges.”

  The first part of our plan was to insult him. Get him operating on impulse so he’d make a mistake and follow me after I left. It never occurred to me that this guy might decide to just flat out whack me right under the crystal chandelier in his overdecorated antique office. But apparently that’s what he planned, because without warning, he started a murderous shuffling advance across the room. That ruptured face became a distorted mask of rage. His scarred lips pulled back in a snarl, exposing teeth, big and square as tombstones.

  I don’t like giving up ground under any circumstance, but in that instant Sammy Petrovitch had me spooked. I was now close enough to read unchecked insanity in his stone gray eyes. He had at least a hundred fifty pounds and five inches on me, so I started backpedaling until I slammed into a paneled wall and rocked an oil painting. One of the female Imperials—Catherine—was hanging from a hook in a thousand-dollar gilt frame, looking down her aristocratic nose at me.

  Sammy took another shuffle step, then paused, bringing both hands up into some kind of combat strike position, methodically sizing me up, deciding how he was going to annihilate me.

  “Back up, asshole,” I commanded. “You touch me, I’m taking you in for aggravated assault on a police officer.”

  It didn’t begin to dampen his enthusiasm. He shuffled in closer. His eyes glinted with pre-combat intensity.

  This wasn’t going at all as I planned.

  Just then the side door burst open and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw another man moving into the office. “Samoyla! Stoi! Shto ti delaesh? Nyet!” he shouted, as he grabbed Sammy and pulled him back.

  I was propped up against the brown paneling next to a disapproving Catherine the Great, who was still swinging wildly from her hook.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded. Judging from the expensive suit and the size of his diamonds, it was Iggy. He was one third smaller than his brother with a strong face and greased-back hair that was the texture a
nd color of poured concrete. He looked nothing like Sammy. But then a Stinger missile in Afghanistan had forever ended the notion of any sibling resemblance.

  “What do you want?” he said, his English far better than his brother’s.

  “I have a subpoena for records on Patriot Petroleum,” I said, holding it out. “You and your company are being audited by the LAPD for financial crimes.”

  Iggy snatched the paperwork out of my hands and glanced at it. “Our attorneys will deal with this. You go.”

  “Not that easy,” I answered. “This ape was threatening to attack me. A threat of violence constitutes felonious assault.” Sammy was rocking from side to side, his eyes had now gone slightly blank, someone not in complete possession of his faculties.

  I certainly hadn’t been ready for the mammoth insanity of Samoyla Petrovitch.

  “He did not touch you. You have served your papers. It is done and you go. This is America. We know our rights,” Iggy said.

  “I love it when you noncitizen mob assholes throw your American rights around,” I growled. “That’s a real crack-up. From now on, I’m gonna make you a full-time project,” I said, glaring at Sammy. “You’re both Priority One on my shit list. I’ll stay on it until I get both of you either jailed or deported back to Odessa. There are two officers from the financial division in your lobby. They need a place to work. You give them everything this warrant calls for or I’ll be back here with another fucking warrant for obstruction of justice and failure to comply with a legally obtained court order. You don’t want to test me on this.”

  I moved toward the door, paused on the threshold for a moment and looked at them, trying to judge my jeopardy and how much damage I’d done.

  Sammy and Iggy were both glowering, standing side by side in a nice little homicidal tableau.

  “This is the beginning of the end for you two pukes. When I’m through, you’re both gonna be chained to a wall.”

  Samoyla lurched forward, but Iggy pulled him back. I turned and exited the office, heading down the gilded hallway past the Imperials, into the lobby. Behind me, I could hear voices yelling angrily in Russian. A door slammed somewhere in the hall.